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Graduate School
2008
Indian agent Gad Humphreys and the politics of
slave claims on the Florida frontier, 1822-1830
Kevin D. Kokomoor
University of South Florida
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Indian Agent Gad Humphreys And The Politics Of Slave Claims On The Florida
Frontier, 1822-1830
by
Kevin D. Kokomoor
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
Department of History
College of Arts and Sciences
University of South Florida
Major Professor: John M. Belohlavek, Ph.D.
Gary R. Mormino, Ph.D.
Barbara Berglund, Ph.D
Date of Approval:
April 9, 2008
Keywords: florida, slavery, seminole, humphreys, duval
© Copyright 2008 , Kevin Kokomoor
Table of Contents
List of Figures
ii
Abstract
iii
Introduction
1
Chapter One: The Natives
12
Chapter Two: The Territory
21
Chapter Three: The Agency
32
Chapter Four: Slave Claims
51
Chapter Five: Mrs. Cook and Mrs. Hannay
77
Chapter Six: Humphreys’ Trial
94
Chapter Seven: Humphreys’ Removal
112
Conclusion
127
Bibliography
133
i
List of Figures
Figure 1.
Territorial Florida
6
Figure 2.
Colonial and Territorial Black Settlements
17
Figure 3.
Fugitive Slave Illustrations
26
Figure 4.
Location of the Agency
45
Figure 5.
Plan of the Agency House
46
ii
Indian Agent Gad Humphreys and the Politics of
Slave Claims on the Florida Frontier, 1822-1830
Kevin Kokomoor
ABSTRACT
This project examines the intimate role slave claims played in the animosities
which quickly developed from the acquisition of the Florida territory to the outbreak of
the Second Seminole Indian War. By focusing on the Indian Agency and its first
administrator, Gad Humphreys, this connection is made by suggesting that the territory’s
legislators were unwilling to allow the coexistence of Seminoles and blacks on the
Florida frontier. The presence of these communities threatened developing Middle
Florida plantations with significantly increased risks of both slave runaways and
insurrection. In response, settlers and government officials pressed Humphreys to see not
only that the Seminoles were pacified, but also that runaway slaves were apprehended
and returned to their owners.
The agent, however, held fundamentally different opinions on the subject of
adjudicating these controversies than did the citizens under his direction, and his
superiors in the War Department. When Humphreys regularly supported Seminole
claimants in the often-bitter property contests, his actions were met with the disapproval
of his superiors—particularly Governor William Pope DuVal—who felt that his first duty
was to ensure the development of the territory’s plantations. The claims of Margaret
Cook and Mary Hannay, in particular, strained these once respectful relationships to the
iii
point where DuVal sought to have Humphreys removed on various charges of
misconduct relating to his direction in the controversies. An investigation was initiated
into a number of allegations, yet focused on his conduct in slave controversies, and found
that far from acting inappropriately, Humphreys had performed his duty with exceptional
integrity. Ultimately, however, DuVal’s effort was successful. Humphreys was
superceded in 1830 by John Phagan—an agent much more willing to take the harsh
measures necessary to have the numerous slaves claimed by the territory’s citizens
surrenders.
In examining the actions of Humphreys, the Indians under his charge, and the
legislators he reported to, slave claim controversies of the 1822-1830 period clearly
illustrate the centrality of the slavery issue on the Florida frontier, and inextricably
connect slavery to the outbreak of the Second Seminole Indian War.
iv
Introduction
John Mahon’s History of the Second Seminole Indian War has become, to scholars of
both the Seminole war era and of the Florida frontier generally, the definitive, even benchmark
study of the era. To scholars of the conflict, especially, it has become the one by which many
have since been measured.1
The war itself was a complex struggle; it had been waged over a
multitude of hostilities, many of which were present in the pre-territorial period. Yet, two of
these—expansion and slavery—came to a head in the first decades of American government.
And attention to the prewar period, particularly the 1820s, provides excellent insight into the
development of those antagonisms. Ultimately, it helps make sense of the bitter, desperate
nature of the struggle. Mahon recognized the critical importance of these years, and his study of
the conflict benefited distinctly from his understanding of its intricate roots.
Yet, in his introduction, Mahon chose first to recognize a previous study—according to
him, the classic. “Represented on library shelves for 120 years,” this was Lieutenant John T.
Sprague’s Origin, Progress, and Conclusion of the Florida War, published in 1848. “This
book,” Mahon continued, “standing alone for more than a century, has become like a bible to
those who bother to concern themselves with the Second Seminole War.”2 Interestingly enough,
Sprague’s study was one of the first, but not the original study. Myer M. Cohen’s Notices of
East Florida and the Campaigns, and Woodburne Potter’s The War in Florida, for instance,
1
John K. Mahon, History of the Second Seminole Indian War, 1835-1842, 2nd ed. (Gainesville: University of
Florida Press, 1985).
2
John T. Sprague, The Origin, Progress, and Conclusion of the Florida War (New York: D. Appleton & Company,
1848; Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1964); Mahon, vii-viii.
1
were both published shortly after the war commenced in 1836, and provided the most recent
coverage of the conflict and its causes.3 Nonetheless, Mahon recognized Sprague’s 1848 study
as the most impressive contribution in the post war years—an understandable assertion. As an
officer who served in the Florida theatre for a number of years, to say he had an intimate
knowledge of the conflict would be very much of an understatement. And, as a result, his
impressive collection of original correspondence strengthen the analysis he brings to the war’s
causes and prosecution. In fact, contemporary historians have continued to lean on his writings
extensively as a legitimate source of primary evidence.4
Still, as Mahon admitted, “Unfortunately, it is out of proportion.”5 Not enough time, for
instance, was spent on the critical prewar years. More importantly, the lieutenant made no effort
to set the conflict in a broader historical context, “or to demonstrate forcefully the close
connection between the coming of this Indian war and the general issue of Negro slavery, which
was then the central problem of the United States.”6 This critique is powerful.
The project that follows will attempt to heed this suggestion, and examine more closely
the critical prewar years by illustrating the ways slavery influenced or impacted the development
of the Florida frontier, and ultimately fomented the Second Seminole Indian War in 1836.
Specifically, I will focus on the years immediately following the region’s acquisition by the
United States government from Spanish colonial authorities in 1821. Colonel Gad Humphreys,
late of the Army, and William Pope DuVal, late from the region’s federal courts, were the
3
Woodburne Potter, The War in Florida (Baltimore: Lewis and Coleman, 1836; Anne Arbor, MI: University
Microfilms, 1966); Myer M. Cohen, Notices of Florida and Campaigns (Charleston: Burgess & Honour, 1836;
Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1964) .
4
While Sprague’s inclusion of correspondences and talks are presented as if they are verbatim reproductions, they
are not. Whether Sprague meant to alter or paraphrase parts of his included correspondences is not known. Yet,
several letters are shortened, altered, or misdated. As a result, inclusion of his letters should be used very cautiously.
Most are reproductions of letters found in the books of correspondences received or sent by the Office of Indian
Affairs, and although not transcribed, offer original copies.
5
Mahon, vii.
6
Ibid.
2
primary players there. Their involvement through the Indian Agency moving from 1822 to 1830
was fundamental in developing the vast and fertile frontier the nation had just recently acquired.
The development of this frontier, however, paralleled the development of plantation society and
of slavery. The Indian Agency became and increasingly powerful presence in this growth;
slavery, as with other issues more recognizable in Indian policy, soon consumed the politics of
the Florida frontier. This context is an excellent example of what Mahon suggested.
Of course, others attempted to resolve the conflict Mahon recognized in Sprague’s work.
Joshua Reed Giddings’ The Florida Exiles and the War for Slavery was published ten years after
Origins, for instance, in 1858.7 As far as he made slavery and the concept of a slavery-driven
war the central themes in his argument, Giddings definitely appeared to fill that void.
Unfortunately, Joshua Giddings was the most radical of radical Republicans; his study was
published at the height of the Civil War build-up in 1858, and was then republished in 1863.
Consequently, its academic value should be approached with extreme cautiousness, and his
analysis should be viewed as little more than propaganda. Later, Charles H. Coe’s Red Patriots:
The Story of the Seminoles was published at the turn of the century, in 1898.8 Yet while Coe’s
exposition does at least embrace the role of slaves in the Seminole conflict, he does so only with
token inclusion—in the introduction and only with a passing nod to Sprague or Giddings. Thus,
Sprague persists. As John Mahon implied in 1967, a more studied effort was clearly necessary.
His own work contributed significantly to filling this omission, but still more elaboration
was necessary. What is more fascinating, then, is that John Mahon’s call has, for the most part,
remained unheeded by the war’s more contemporary historians. In the wake of Mahon’s
History, Virginia Bergman Peters next attempted to illustrate the struggle through the lens of its
7
Joshua R. Giddings, The Exiles of Florida (Columbus: O., Follett, and Foster, 1858).
Charles H. Coe, Red Patriots: The Story of the Seminoles (Cincinnati: Editor Publishing Company, 1898;
Gainesville: University of Florida, 1974).
8
3
slave controversies in 1979, with The Florida Wars.9 Expounding heavily on the close
association of slaves, black Seminoles, and the removal debate, and including that examination
over generations of residence in Florida, Peters’ study would appear definitive in making the
slavery connection Mahon suggested twelve years previous.
However, her arguments were as forceful as they were blunt and obviously biased; sadly,
she in no way reinforced those assertions through the primary evidence she cited. Without any
sort of definitive primary source documentation, much of her argument should ultimately be
taken with little more than the cautiousness of Giddings’ study. James Leitch Wright’s Creeks
and Seminoles, published a year after Mahon’s revised addition came out in 1985, provides
probably the most convincing (and most professional) elucidation of the causes behind the
Seminole conflict to date—an analysis which adroitly considered issues of land, trade, and
slavery as the variables which coalesced to created the Seminole conflict.10 Wright was more of
a Creek and Seminole historian, however. He was primarily interested in projecting their shared
history, and did not focus his study on the development of war.
Regardless, Wright understood blacks’ conspicuousness in Seminole, territorial Florida.
From his study, a sort of disturbing, backwards slide began, slowly displacing slavery from the
list of variables involved in the conflict. Amazingly, the most recent examples of Seminole War
scholarship have been the ones which have chosen to eschew the position of slaves in the
Seminole removal debate most completely. John and Mary Lou Missall’s The Seminole Wars,
published in 2004, provides excellent evidence of this retrograde. Their narrative gives scant
9
Virginia Bergman Peters, The Florida Wars (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1979).
James Leitch Wright, Creeks and Seminoles (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986).
10
4
recognition to blacks of any relation to the Seminoles—whether slaves, maroons, or black
Seminoles—and does so almost solely in two pages of their introduction.11
Thus, as Sprague’s war scholarship has stood for over a century, practically on its own,
Mahon’s study has done the same for close to half that time now. But alas, where blacks’
position in the debate has flagged on the part of Seminole war scholars, it has been surging for
some time from the direction of many of the most highly respected historians of African
American history. A salvo of path-breaking articles by Kenneth Wiggins Porter, consolidated
into The Negro on the American Frontier in 1971, became the spearhead of this surge. Since
that time, historians such as Kevin Mulroy and Larry Eugene Rivers have furthered the study of
Black Seminoles and slaves in the Seminole country in astonishing ways. Rivers’ 2000 study,
Slavery in Florida, for instance, has been recognized as a seminal study of the institution’s
development throughout all of Florida. His chapter on the interaction between blacks and
Indians, most specifically, has become quite possibly the most promising study of the run-up to
the Seminole conflict yet, expressed heavily through the lens of black participation.12
In even the most comprehensive of these studies, however, one critical aspect of the
conflict remains un-examined—Florida’s Seminole Indian Agency. This federal institution
played an irrefutable role in the territory’s development, perhaps in a way unparalleled by other
territorial experiences. Its position in controversies over slaves, which arose through the 1820s,
was no less critical; its officers played an undeniable role in flaming the enmity which ultimately
erupted into war. Yet, as a key player in the slavery debate, the U. S. government has been
11
John and Mary Lou Missall, The Seminole Wars (Gainesville: The University of Florida Press, 2004), 10-12. See
also: James Covington, The Seminoles of Florida (Gainesville: The University of Florida Press, 1993); and Joe
Knetsch, Florida’s Seminole Wars, 1817-1858 (Charleston: Arcadia, 2003).
12
Kenneth Wiggins Porter, The Negro on the American Frontier (New York: Arno Press, 1971); Kevin Mulroy,
Freedom on the Border: The Seminole Maroons in Florida, the Indian Territory, Coahuila, and Texas (Lubbock,
TX: Texas Tech University Press, 1993); Larry Eugene Rivers, Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days to
Emancipation (Gainesville: The University of Florida Press, 2000).
5
Figure 1. Territorial Florida
The 1820s Florida frontier was almost entirely unpopulated below Tampa Bay, where Fort Brooke was established
to secure the southern boundary of the Seminole Nation. The most settled towns were Pensacola on the west
extreme of the panhandle, and St. Augustine on the east. Tallahassee was chosen as capital not only because of its
position between these two locations, but also because of its central location in the region’s blossoming cotton belt.
6
alarmingly absent from most studies of the larger conflict era. As a result, an
examination of the Agency, its experiences and its effects should most certainly further elucidate
the role blacks played in the region’s turbulence through the 1820s and 1830s. Territorial
officials were forced to deal with these complaints and, unfortunately, Gad Humphreys’ agency
became consumed by them.
Yet, the story of Florida’s Seminole Agency and its highly conflicted position on slave
claims began, really, with the intersection of three preceding developments. In the first of these,
the movement of Seminoles and blacks into the Florida territory can be seen as the result both of
Creek autonomy and emigration, and a Spanish colonial system that enticed, liberated, and
armed runaway slaves. These arrangements had, by the change of flags, developed populations
of both Seminoles and blacks along the Florida borders and into the interior; they were
autonomous, fiercely militant, and extremely wary of Americans. The second, conflicting
history considers the development of middle Florida—a region blossoming into quite the cotton
belt. Its improvement in an Old South direction was progressing remarkably well and territorial
legislators wanted, above all else, to promote and continue that growth. Free black populations
naturally threatened such development; in response, their eradication—and the Seminole
communities that supported them—became paramount to settlers and legislators alike.
Lastly, the Indian Office arrived. It moved into Florida in 1821 and encountered loosely
confederated Seminole and black settlements in alarming numbers. Regardless, the Office
operated by a system which had already been effectually developed in other southern nations,
and legislators were confident that it would prevail in Florida as well. Using an agent, the
territorial governor, Superintendent Thomas McKenney, and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun,
7
the Monroe Administration sought to pacify the Seminole bands, isolate them, and clear the
Florida frontier for American expansion.
Ultimately, these stories construct a very volatile Florida territory which existed by the
early 1820s—a frontier where Gad Humphreys arrived, fresh from military service, to assume
the Seminole Agency. He undertook that office in a dangerous region, and was harnessed with
the authority to see to its development. Yet the agent soon realized that his duties included a
considerable amount more than isolating and pacifying the Indians—orders which proved
difficult enough to effect. As the cohabitation of the Seminoles and blacks collided with the
development of chattel slavery, the incidence of runaway slaves increased accordingly. The
business of having them returned, as with other issues relating to Indian-settler intercourse, had
to be channeled through the Agency—through him. It was these claims which soon became the
greatest source of animosity between the regions’ settlers and the Indians under his control.
Humphreys, as the sole agent, mediated a great deal of them. So did the territory’s
governor, William Pope DuVal, who shared in the agent’s duties and directed him as a superior
authority. Although they had previously worked together in placing the Seminoles on a
reservation, sustaining them in difficult times, and mitigating their usually hazardous interaction
with whites, they soon disagreed over slave claims. The two had very different opinions
regarding the ever-rankling disagreements they were forced to deal with daily, revolving around
claims of slave property. DuVal, importantly, shared the views of the burgeoning Democracy
enthusiastically. His first duty was to his fellow citizens, and to the emigrant Americans who
wished to call the Florida frontier their home. Humphreys, on the other hand, was a much more
outspoken proponent of native rights, and those rights extended to the property claims for slaves.
He recognized the liberties of the blacks as well—many who had legitimately gained their
8
freedom under Spanish rule.
Eventually, their disagreements over runaway slave policy became a bitter power
struggle, which flamed into a Department-wide controversy that effectually incapacitated the
Agency by 1830. By that time, the governor and agent stood in belligerent contradiction to each
other. Soon, they were dragging Superintendent McKenney and several secretaries of war into
an argument over the legal—even moral—justifications for demanding slaves from Indians who
clearly felt they were being robbed. What was soon concluded by removing Humphreys as
agent, illustrates with striking clarity the issue of slavery as it intimately influenced the Seminole
conflict.
Surprisingly, Colonel Gad Humphreys and his agency are factors in the history of the
Seminole conflict which have been largely ignored. Sprague included a great deal of
Humphreys’ correspondence in Florida War. He ultimately approved of the agent’s course, and
lamented his removal. Generally, so did Dr. Mahon. Even the latter study, however, failed to
fully examine these controversies and integrate them into the larger conflict.13 Only one study
has included such detail, and that investigation came to a conclusion—interestingly enough—
which seems to find Humphreys almost criminally culpable. In the debate over runaways in
Florida, George Klos argued in 1989, “the agents assigned exacerbated rather than allayed
conflict.” And Humphreys, in particular, was to blame. Throughout his tenure, according to
Klos’ argument, the agent did almost everything in his power to counteract slave owners, at least
concerning their complaints about runaways. Furthermore, he was trading illegally in many of
the slaves personally.14
13
Sprague, 70-71; Mahon, 70-71. See also: Giddings, 75; Peters, 86.
George Klos, “Blacks and the Seminole Removal Debate, 1821-1835,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 68 (July
1989): 63-66.
14
9
In the following study, Humphreys’ actions are argued to quite the opposite conclusion.
As an agent, he developed into a champion of the Seminole Indians at a time, according to
Mahon, when they badly needed one.15 He recognized the position of blacks in Seminole society
with a cognizance unmatched by his superiors—whether in the governorship or in the War
Department. He moved time after time to shield Seminole claimants from the avariciousness of
the territory’s settlers. He rebuffed settlers’ repeated attempts to gain these slaves, and in doing
so earned the widespread enmity the planters. He also regularly challenged his superiors with a
sometimes-surprising intensity, confronting them and the unfair practices which robbed
Seminoles of what he viewed was their rightful property. It was his unwillingness to defraud the
Seminoles of their slaves, and not his own cupidity, which earned the aAgent the respect of the
Seminoles, the condemnation of the whites in his region, and ultimately the censure of his
superiors.
By the time Humphreys was removed in 1830, Florida’s Seminoles and settlers had
become true belligerents. These animosities developed around a number of different
discrepancies—whether over the struggle for land, food, or slaves. But slavery was central. Not
even the conflict over emigration illustrates Floridians’ rapacity, the Indians’ desperate
indignation, or even the breakdown of the region’s government, contributed as strongly to the
controversy. Humphreys’ tenure in the Agency from 1822 to 1830 had dramatically altered the
course of slave claims and Seminole-settler relations by the time he was removed. Where this
removal would seem to prove his failure as an agent, however, I argue that Humphreys was quite
the opposite, and that he spared Florida a bloody guerilla war, if only for six years.
And yet the agent’s actions, those of his superiors, and of the Indians under his control,
do a great deal more than highlight the inadequacies of the Federal Indian Office, or the cruel
15
Mahon, 59.
10
rapacity of frontiersmen. They help shed light, for instance, on the relationships Indians shared
with blacks in striking detail—relationships which enraged countless Seminoles when their
slaves were, time and time again, stolen from them. They also emphasize the degree in which
those relationships outraged white settlers and the enormous pressure they exerted to have
alleged runaways apprehended—whether rightfully or deceitfully. These dealings had, possibly
more than any other controversy, convinced many Floridians that removal—or war—were the
only options. In short, the first eight years of the Seminole Agency, and the slave claims that
practically paralyzed it by 1830, can tell us a considerable amount about the roles blacks played
in the larger Seminole conflict. In an effort to help answer Dr. Mahon’s call, to “demonstrate
forcefully the close connection between the coming of this Indian war and the general issue of
Negro slavery,” Colonel Gad Humphreys and the politics of slave claims on the Florida frontier
is an examination that needs to take place.
11
Chapter One
The Natives
“Before giving an account of this wanton destruction of human life,” historian Charles
Coe suggested in 1898, “it seems an appropriate place to notice the negroes who lived among the
Indians.” Reasserting that centrality, another historian concluded more than a century later that
in the “triracial Florida” world, runaways slaves rested “at the root of much of the impending
conflict between whites and Indians,” and certainly the Seminoles.16 Connections the two
groups shared through both the Seminole removal debate and war were ones which coalesced
slowly in over a century of residence on the Florida frontier. Although for separate reasons, both
Seminoles and slaves had moved into Spanish Florida around the same time period, mostly
during the eighteenth century. Through their mutual struggles for existence and autonomy, by
the territory’s acquisition in 1821, the two groups had grown extremely close, and the efforts
begun by territorial officials to extirpate those roots soon proved painfully difficult.
William H. Simmons, as with numerous other commentators, extensively noted the
relationships Seminoles and their slaves shared in both the Seminole and maroon towns he
passed through. “The partial union of wild and social habits,” he noted, “exhibited by the Negro
settlements, presents a very singular [anomaly], no where else, perhaps, to be met with. The
gentle treatment they experience from the Indians, is a very amiable trait in the character of the
16
Coe, 14; Rivers, 189.
12
latter.”17 They sometimes lived in Seminole towns, and sometimes in autonomous maroon
settlements; in both cases, however, they managed their own cattle, crops, homes and personal
affairs. They dressed similarly, carried weapons and hunted alike as well. In his observation,
army officer Archibald McCall noticed their large fields “of the finest land,” which produced
extensive crops of corn, rice and vegetables. Slaves’ houses were well built, in some cases
“more comfortable than those of the Indian masters.” They rendered to their owners a tribute in
livestock or produce, but otherwise were “free to go and come at pleasure, and in some cases are
elevated to the position of equality with their masters.”18
Blacks’ position within Seminole communities, another asserted, was one “compared
with that of negroes and overseers, of luxury and ease.” Agricultural demands never exceeded
the “very trifling”—usually no more than ten bushels from their own crops, “the remainder being
applied to his own profit.”19 As historian Kevin Mulroy has suggested, these tribute
arrangements mirrored the communal agricultural mico system depended upon by Seminole and
Creek cultures for generations. Even its southeastern predecessor, the sabana system, bore
striking similarities. In these arrangements, all members of a town planted in common fields,
and gave portions of the crop to the tribe’s chief, depending upon their individual success.
These offerings were then stockpiled as a common surplus—subject to the chief’s discretion, yet
usually reserved for times of need.20 The “tribute” many of these observers saw blacks paying
17
William H. Simmons, Notices of East Florida (Charleston: A. E. Miller, 1822; Gainesville: University of Florida
Press, 1973), 76.
18
William Kennedy, Texas: The Rise, Progress and Prospects of the Republic of Texas (2 vols., London: R.
Hastings, 1841) vol. 2, 350; Simmons, 76; George A. McCall, Letters From the Frontiers (Philadelphia: Lippincott,
1868; Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1974), 160.
19
Potter, 45-46. See also John Lee Williams, The Territory of Florida (New York: A. T. Goodrich, 1837:
Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1962), 240.
20
Mulroy, 7-8; Simmons, 76; Mark Van Doren, ed., The Travels of William Bartram (New York: Dover
Publications, 1928), 400-401. For more information on the sabana system, see Amy Turner Bushnell, “Ruling ‘the
Republic of Indians’ in Seventeenth-Century Florida,” in Peter H. Wood, Gregory A. Waselkov, M. Thomas Hatley,
eds., Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 140-142.
13
was, very likely, less consistent with a master-slave relationship than with the normal
contribution required of any town member.21
The Indians’ retention “of their own notions, practices, and institutions” facilitated the
incorporation of Africans remarkably well, Mulroy noted, and those customs (including their
economic and agricultural structures) would play heavily into their future with runaways. Like
other traditions, various tribes of Seminoles had also long dealt with slavery, and easily
incorporated Africans into their institution as fugitives began trickling in from the colonies or the
American South. Southern Indian traditions dealt with slavery as a result of battle, however, and
as replacements for lost relatives—either torture or adoption was the usual outcome. Native
customs did not associate slavery with organized labor or agricultural exploitation, as the
institution developed in the American South.22 “It was a mutually advantageous arrangement,”
Kenneth Wiggins Porter concluded, “in which the master furnished protection and the slave paid
a moderate rent in kind, rather than anything even approaching the familiar system of plantation
slavery.”23 Equality was an obtainable proposition for many held in this position. Intermarriage
was not prohibited, and the children of such unions, according to historian Edwin McReynolds,
sometimes acquired complete freedom—an observation confirmed by William Bartram in the
late eighteenth century, as well as many others.24
In the loose confederation of bands and towns that constituted Seminole country, both
Indians and blacks enjoyed a large amount of autonomy and cultural diversity. It was this sort of
independence, Mulroy concluded, which had lured many of the first Indian bands into the region
21
Porter, 186-187.
Mulroy, 7-8, 17.
23
Porter, 186-187.
24
Edwin C. McReynolds, The Seminoles (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1957), 74; Doren, 183. See also,
Coe, 14-15; James Leitch Wright, The Only Land They Knew (New York: Free Press, 1981), 261; Thomas Simpson
Woodward, Woodward's Reminiscences of the Creek, or Muskogee Indians (Mobile, AL: Southern University Press
for Graphics, 1965), 94.
22
14
in the first place.25 Creek tribes, in the lower portions of Georgia and Alabama, operated with a
remarkable autonomy and self-government; although various bands emigrated south for various
reasons throughout the eighteenth century, most were Creeks, and they carried their traditions
with them. Some were enticed south by the fertile, empty fields of north Florida. Still more,
however, fled to the region with the hopes of escaping the expansion of the American frontier.
Into a “rare sort of vacuum,” as Mahon suggested, these first Indian bands relocated, prospered,
and became Seminoles. Their right to the Florida soil was, in essence, a consequence of both the
struggle for empire among European colonial powers, and an aspect of Creek traditions of
autonomy.26 By 1823, just under 5,000 Seminoles were recognized in the region.27
Furthermore, Spanish colonial authorities, who had been bringing those settlements into
contact with runaways through the eighteenth and even seventeenth century, fostered their
existence.28 The first group of these fugitive slaves, fleeing from neighboring English colonies,
reportedly arrived in St. Augustine in 1687. As runaway incidents became more frequent,
colonial officials repeatedly solicited the advice of the Spanish Crown, and soon a royal decree
detailed official Spanish policy. Florida authorities were to begin “giving liberty to all…the men
as well as the women…so that by their example…others will do the same.” Later decrees
reinforced these initial guidelines, including one in 1733, which not only reiterated Spain’s offer
for freedom, but prohibited compensation to their previous owners. In return, the fugitives were
required to accept the Catholic religion, and complete four years of service before the crown
would officially grant their freedom.29
25
Mulroy, 7.
Mahon, 2-3.
27
“Statement of the Commissioners,” in American State Papers: Indian Affairs 2: 439. Hereafter, ASPIA; Mahon,
31.
28
Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 72-73.
29
Jane Landers, “Spanish Sanctuary: Fugitives in Florida, 1687-1790” Florida Historical Quarterly 62 (January
1984): 297-298, 300; John J. TePaske, “Fugitive Slave: Intercolonial Rivalry and Spanish Slave Policy, 1687-1764,”
26
15
It became, according to one American report, a system which “combined benevolence in
its leading principles, and that, in practice…exhibited a perpetual reciprocity of interest.”30
While recent scholarship has examined the several degrees of freedom available in Spanish
Florida, there is little evidence to refute the comparative liberty blacks enjoyed out of English
colonies and, later, the American South.31 As Mulroy concluded, “Those enslaved, therefore,
exchanged masters gladly by escaping across the border to Florida.” In this environment,
countless blacks were amalgamated with the Seminoles, and their coexistence in Spanish Florida
flourished.32
Nevertheless, the Spaniards lured both blacks and Seminoles into the territory for a
purpose. These policies reflected a want of security on the territory’s northern border as much as
it illustrated the supposed grace of the Catholic Majesty. Raids, depredations, and filibustering
expeditions commenced by the English or Americans became a generational legacy of the
Spanish Florida period. A pointed attack came with the Patriot War of 1812, when Georgians
had been for some time hoping for “a desirable pretext…to penetrate their country, and [brake]
up the Negroe Town” at St. Augustine—“an important evil” growing under the patronage of the
Spanish. While the Seminoles stood to lose their land, Kevin Mulroy concluded, the blacks were
threatened with the loss of their freedom. “Both, therefore, were quick to answer the Spanish
appeal.” Their cooperation with Spanish regulars rebuffed Patriot attempts to seize Spanish East
Florida, proving the collusion of Indian and black forces to be “altogether a formidable foe.”33
in Samuel Proctor, ed., Eighteenth Century Florida and Its Borderlands (Gainesville: University of Florida Press,
1975), 6; Coe, 16.
30
Report of Mr. Metcalf, February 21, 1823, ASPIA 2: 409.
31
For a detailed study of Africans in colonial Florida, see Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida.
32
Foreman, 315, 318; See also: Mulroy, 8; Missall, 10.
33
Mulroy, 12; Mahon, 21-22.
16
Figure 2. Colonial and Territorial Black Settlements
Sources: Landers, Black Society, 236; Mahon, History;
Mulroy, Freedom on the Border; Territorial Papers;
American State Papers.
17
More large emigrations followed the close of the Creek War of 1813-1814 and the bitter
loss thousands of Creeks felt at the conclusion of the treaty of Fort Jackson, which stripped them
of upwards of twenty million acres of land. Numerous “Red Stick” Creeks—as well as blacks—
fled south rather than submit to the terms of that accord. Once in Florida, they too were
considered Seminoles. Many created their own autonomous settlements, while others simply
integrated into the already prosperous Seminole villages. With the influx of these Creek and
black warrior-refugees, the militant atmosphere in the territory further thickened.34
Considering the blacks that chose to reside by themselves, however, the years preceding
the First Seminole War marked a growth period of impressive proportions. With the influx of
emigrants from Alabama and Georgia, large autonomous towns consisting of maroons and
runaway slaves began to emerge. For the most part these black settlements, known as maroon
communities, were usually closely associated with a larger Seminole or Creek town, and with the
passage of time, became large and populated themselves. Examples of these settlements could
be found scattered across the Peninsula: on the Suwannee, around Tallahassee and St. Augustine,
along the St. John’s River, along the Withlacoochie River, above Tampa Bay, in the Great
Wahoo Swamp, in the Big Cyprus Swamp, down the southwest coast of Florida and especially
on Charlotte Harbor.35
The frequency of runaways from these regions, the willingness of the Seminoles and
Spanish to harbor them, and the determination of runaways’ owners in the southern states to
regain them—or perhaps “to take advantage of the confusion and recover additional slave
34
Mahon, 22; Katherine E.H. Braun . “The Creek Indians, Blacks, and Slavery,” The Journal of Southern History 57
(Nov 1991): 633-634; Missall, 22.
35
Braun, 633-634; Milton Meltzer, Hunted Like a Wolf (Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 2004), 52. For an account of
a black settlement on “Big Swamp,” see John C. Ley, Fifty-Two Years in Florida (Nashville TN, 1899), 47. For
information on those settlements south of Tampa Bay, see Clarence Edwin Carter, ed. The Territorial Papers of the
United States (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1956-1962), 22: 744. Hereafter, TP; John
Winslett to Augustus Steele, December 21, 1833, in American State Papers: Military Affairs 6: 453. Hereafter,
ASPMA.
18
property,” Edwin McReynolds suggested—combined to make border diplomacy in the region
frustratingly complicated.36 Coalescing in the destruction of the Negro Fort in 1816, and
Andrew Jackson’s invasion in 1817-1818, depredations on behalf of angry frontiersmen often
destroyed villages and scattered countless communities of both Seminoles and blacks.37 They
also—in what would be a thematic trend—brought both warrior groups together over and over
again in common defense; the threat of annihilation crystallized their alliances in permanent
ways. During one campaign of the 1817 invasion, for instance, over six hundred blacks were
visible in numerous Seminole towns, seen “on parade,” in town squares, bearing arms, and “in
complete fix for fighting” together with their Indian compatriots.38 In another, General Edmund
P. Gaines reported to Major General Andrew Jackson on the forces opposing him in Florida,
numbering the Indian warriors at over two thousand, “besides the blacks, amounting to near four
hundred men, and increasing daily from Georgia.”39 During Jackson’s siege of Suwannee—a
town which included large numbers of both blacks and Seminoles—thousands escaped only after
a heroic defense put on by both black and Seminole warriors allowed the town to evacuate across
the river and escape.40
Whether linked as fellow emigrants, exiles, fugitives or warriors, both Seminoles and
blacks were formed up by the Spanish as the first line of defense and hardened by almost
continual struggle. Through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the two populations
had soon weathered and endured, side by side, a perilous existence in north Florida. Constant
skirmishes had tested or weakened both the black and Seminole warriors. Yet they persevered.
36
McReynolds, 74.
For information on the destruction of Negro Fort and the battles of the First Seminole Indian War, see See James
Covington, “The Negro Fort,” Gulf Coast Historical Review 5 (Spring 1990): 79-91; Mulroy, 15-17; Mahon, 18-28.
38
George Perryman to Lieutenant Sands, February 24, 1817, ASPIA 1: 155.
39
Gen Gaines to Maj Gen Jackson, November 21, 1817, ASPMA 1: 686.
40
Jackson to Calhoun, May 20, 1818, ibid.: 700; Adj. Gen Robert Butler to Brig. Gen Daniel Parker, May 3, 1818,
ibid.: 704.
37
19
Their associations with each other grew stronger; the indignation they held towards the settlers
on their northern borders grew more resolute. It was when the two groups were assailed “from
without,” Mulroy asserted, that their bonds were the strongest.41
In this sort of precarious position, both Seminoles and blacks prospered. In an 1822
survey, the Reverend Jedidiah Morse estimated their number at around five or six hundred. Ten
years later, Alachua county residents put their population at over eleven hundred, and Joshua
Giddings noted that by the outbreak of the Second Seminole Indian War, the total, “including
women and children, was not less than twelve hundred.”42
Yet the American government, which John Mahon suggested “was to be their nemesis,”
would not tolerate their existence.43 With the territory’s purchase, everything changed. Most
importantly, both black and Indian settlements were faced with the reality of an imminent,
determined threat. As one interested observer foreshadowed, “it is probable, that this hoard will
be broken up by the American Government,—as their existence, in their present state, is
incompatible with the safety and interests of the planters of Florida.44
41
Mulroy, 17.
Morse, 311; TP 24: 643-644; Giddings, 97.
43
Mahon, 18-19.
44
Simmons, 75.
42
20
Chapter Two
The Territory
As Williams Simmons’ observations implied, whether slave or free, the blacks living
amongst the various Seminoles tribes constituted a steady threat to slavery’s existence in the
more settled states on its northern border. Settlers populated the region relentlessly in the wake
of its annexation; soon, many were complaining of the loss of their slaves to Seminole raiders.
The Indians were similarly enthusiastic in blaming American frontiersmen for slave stealing,
among other depredations. The frictions these mutual threats generated around the borders with
Georgia particularly, Mahon asserted, heightened those typical of race relations on other
territorial borders.45 It was natural, another historian has suggested, that the presence of a tribe
of Indians, over which runaway slaves “exerted such a peculiar influence,” should rouse the
“jealousy and enmity” of the slaveholders outside of the Florida territory in the ways they did.46
Ultimately, the acquisition of Florida was only a matter of time. Americans felt that
Florida belonged in America “as a foot belongs to a leg.”47 And with its acquisition, numerous
slaveholders must surely have breathed a collective sigh of relief. For, although Seminoles still
populated Florida, the threat of having their slaves escape or stolen no longer included an
international boundary. Under national jurisdiction, the lengths resorted to in having property
seized must doubtless have been made less desperate or severe. Simmons confirmed that
confidence in 1822, explaining that in the wake of the annexation, “the Negro property, also in
45
Mahon, 20.
Porter, 48.
47
Mahon, 19.
46
21
the South, is now surrounded with greater security, and rendered less susceptible of being
converted into a source of domestic danger.”48
The invasions of 1816-1818—many backed by United States army participation—had
already manifested this fear. While most of the earlier incursions were fueled by simple
American expansion, Kenneth Wiggins Porter suggested, another objective, “which became
increasingly important and eventually developed into a primary purpose,” was to better
safeguard the institution in the states by breaking up the runaway negro settlements in Florida
which threatened it.49 A British trader in the territory—later executed for his participation—
wrote his son confirming that apprehension in 1818. “The main drift of the Americans,”
Alexander Arbuthnot accused, “is to destroy the black population of Suwannee.”50
“You harbor a great number of my black people among you,” General Gaines
admonished a Seminole Chief during one campaign into that particularly large settlement. “If
you give me leave to go by you against them, I shall not hurt any thing belonging to you.”51
General Jackson echoed the same sentiment in his larger 1818 campaign, explaining that “to
chastise a savage foe, who, combined with a lawless band of negro brigands, have for some time
past been carrying on a cruel and unprovoked war against the citizens of the United States, had
compelled the president to direct me to march my army into Florida.”52 These incursions
became the bulk of the First Seminole Indian War, which officially ended in May 1818.
Certainly disrupted and many permanently displaced, the Seminole tribe suffered heavily
from Jackson’s assault. And yet, a second assault came with the transfer from Spain, only a few
48
Brent Weisman, Unconquered People: Florida’s Seminole and Miccosukee People (Gainesville: University of
Florida Press, 1999), 43; Simmons, 53.
49
Porter, 210.
50
A. Arbuthnot to John Arbuthnot, April 2, 1818, in American State Papers: Foreign Relations 4: 584. Hereafter,
ASPFA.
51
Gen Gaines to King Hatchy, n.d., ASPMA 1: 723.
52
Maj. Gen Jackson to , April 6, 1818, ASPMA 1: 704.
22
years later. The ratification of the Adams-Oñis Treaty in 1821 formally brought the territory
under American control where, ultimately, “the slavery problem could be handled more
easily.”53 Article six of that agreement did, on the one hand, guarantee an admittance of all the
region’s inhabitants—regardless of race—to “the enjoyment of all privileges, rights, and
immunities of the citizens of the United States.” Sadly, however, as John Mahon and Larry
Rivers have noted, that clause must have only been designed to salve the conscience of his
Catholic Majesty, as there was almost no likelihood the Americans would honor the pledge.54
Rather, whites took almost immediate steps in eradicating the combined threat in the
wake of annexation. Nervous Georgia slaveholders initiated the first of these steps, anxious to
retrieve their numerous slaves pilfered by the Seminoles or held under Spanish protection. They
first accomplished this not through an agreement with the Seminoles, but through their northern
neighbors in the Creek Nation. Commissioners there were appointed to negotiate indemnity
demands for slaves on behalf of Georgians, and in fairly straightforward language, they were
informed that the treaty was to be for the benefit of the state’s citizens, “and her wishes should
control them.” What resulted was the Treaty of Indian Springs, concluded in January of 1821.
With its agreement, not only did the Creek Nation surrender five million acres of land, but also
took formal responsibility for the slaves under the control of the Seminoles; $250,000 in
pecuniary damages were paid to the citizens of Georgia on their behalf.55
Previous efforts had been made to wrest from the Creek Nation the numerous slaves in
their possession, as could be seen in treaties held in August 1790 and June 1796. By those
agreements, their nation was required to deliver all blacks to the closest American post, or face a
53
Grant Foreman, Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1932), 317.
54
Mahon, 29; Rivers, 11-12.
55
Foreman, 317; Williams, 239; For more information on the treaty proceedings, see ASPIA 2: 252-257; Charles J.
Kappler, LL. M, ed., Indian Treaties, 1778-1883 (New York: Interland Publishing Inc., 1973), 198.
23
deputation of commissioners which would enter the nation and claim “such prisoners and
negroes” on behalf of American citizens.56 With the incorporation of the Florida territory,
however, Georgians were anxious to retrieve the property held out of the jurisdiction of Georgia
or the Creek Nation; a new treaty, integrating the Seminole tribe, was necessary. With the
fixation of blame placed upon both the Creeks and Seminoles, and their slaves indemnified,
Georgians were thus relieved of a financial burden they had been agonizing over for more than
thirty years.
On the other hand, as one contemporary noted, great exertions had also been made, “to
get the Indian negroes away, by other false claims of individuals; and under these claims,” many
slaves were pilfered by the Georgians “by force and fraud.”57 If this had been the object in the
past treaties attempted, then with the conclusion of the Indian Springs agreement, it had finally
been achieved. Not only had Georgians retrieved at least some restitution for the slaves they had
lost among long-removed Seminole tribes, they had the pleasure of pitting the southern tribes
against their northern brethren in the process. Yet, would the Treaty of Indian Springs really
quell Georgians’ interest in the slaves already indemnified, yet also being reigned under the
control of the American government? Collecting damages for lost slaves was a good start;
collecting damages and recovering lost slaves, however, would prove much more profitable to
planter interests—even if it meant defrauding the Seminoles of theirs. They had multiple
weapons within their control for affecting these desires. Creek warriors were now more than
willing to help capture slaves from their evidently delinquent cousins—especially the ones they
had just recently paid for. With the imposition of American jurisdiction over the territory,
exploiting the naïve Seminoles would only be a matter of time.
56
57
Kappler, 26, 46.
Williams, 239.
24
Under the umbrella of this jurisdiction, the fertile Middle Florida region appeared much
more attractive to a great number of Old South planters, and development of the region sped up
considerably. Particularly, cotton held the most promise, although sugar and tobacco also found
limited success.58 The interior was, in Governor DuVal’s 1824 estimation, “the most valuable
Southern country I have ever seen.” He had no doubt that the fertile Middle region—located
between the Suwannee and Apalachicola rivers—alone would sell for “more than the Florida
debt.” Planters from Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia agreed, and began moving their slaves
and families into the province; rich plantations were soon developing across Florida’s brand new
“black belt.” In the decade of development proceeding from Florida’s annexation, this belt
developed into Jackson, Gadsden, Leon, Jefferson, and Madison counties. The great majority of
Florida’s slaves resided here—sixty percent by 1830—and they were producing roughly 85
percent of the territory’s cotton. The 1830 census reveals a total population in Florida of almost
35,000; over 15,500 were slaves, and 7,587 resided in the middle Florida region. With the
majority of this North Florida slaveholder class controlled by a small percentage of planters—
those who owned twenty or more slaves—soon “Piedmont and Tidewater society had come into
being,” according to Julia Floyd Smith, making Florida’s interests akin to those of the
neighboring Old South.59
Yet, while North Florida held lucrative cotton growth prospects, in terms of its security
and development, it in no way mirrored the Old South culture it emulated. The majority of
Florida was still an unpopulated, unbroken frontier; the possibility of achieving a successful
escape was much more of a reality to slaves in Florida than in more settled slave states. The
58
Rivers, 18-19.
TP 22, 848-849; Julia Floyd Smith, Slavery and Plantation Growth in Antebellum Florida (Gainesville:
University of Florida Press, 1973), 17-18; Abstract of the Return of the Fifth Census (Washington: Duff Green
1832), 44; Rivers, 17-18.
59
25
Figure 3. Fugitive Slave Illustrations
Above: “Escape,” and “In Hiding,”
c1935, Bernarda Bryson.
LC-DIG-ppmsca-06786, and
LC-DIG-ppmsca-06781, respectively, in
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs
Division
Below: 1834 Engraving of a slave
being kidnapped by slave raiders.
Library of Congress
Above: “In The Swamp,”
c1863, H. L. Stephens.
LC-USZ62-28494, in
Library of Congress, Prints
and Photographs Division
26
reality of a bloody slave uprising was just as evident to slaveholders and similarly
unsettling. They were removing thousands of slaves from well developed southern states
and planting them in relatively dangerous—borderline inhospitable—frontier
surroundings, practically surrounded by both Seminole and maroon settlements. Facing
this threat, territorial legislators began developing a plainly outlandish slave code,
progressing through the 1820s with what Larry Eugene Rivers has considered “a small
flood of repressive legislation.” Beginning with the act “For the punishment of slaves, in
violations of the penal laws of this territory,” any crime of capital offense resulted in
death, while most other infractions resulted in whippings in a variety of lashes. Of note
in this first wave of legislation, section four called for the apprehending of runaways,
“whereas many times, slaves run away and lie hid and lurking in swamps.” Any slave
away without permit, more than five miles from his owner’s plantation, would thereby be
considered a runaway.60
More legislation followed in 1824, 1826, 1827, 1828 and 1829, further revising
and amending the original statutes. In particular, the 1824, 1827 and 1828 legislative
additions further defined and regulated the apprehension and redelivery of slaves by the
authorities and Indian agents. They enjoined upon agents the power to apprehend
fugitives, yet also provided them with a five-dollar profit, per slave, on all runaways
successfully delivered—proceeds that could be used to run the Agency.61 As with the
original statutes, no less than thirty lashes were required for even the most trivial
60
Rivers, 12; Acts of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida, Passed At Their First Session,
1822 (Pensacola: Floridian Press, 1823), 182. See pages 181-185 for full run of legislation.
61
Acts of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida, Passed At Their Third Session, 1824
(Tallahassee: Florida Intelligencer, 1825), 289-292; Acts of the Legislative Council of the Territory of
Florida, Passed At Their Fifth Session, 1826-7 (Tallahassee: Florida State University, 1988), 141-144, 149150; Acts of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida, Passed At Their Sixth Session, 1827-8
(Tallahassee: Joseph D. Davenport, 1828), 92-94, 97-110.
27
infraction. For the more dangerous offences, including rebellion, assault, or even theft,
slaves were to be executed. These statutes were in most cases oppressively severe and, in
many others, extreme to the point of being unenforceable. Yet, as Larry Eugene Rivers
and Canter Brown, Jr. have argued, their harshness reflected the genuine threat posed by
the presence of Seminoles and slaves in burgeoning Middle Florida.62
“Nervous planters hesitated to invest in lands and slaves in so unprotected a
situation,” Dr. Rivers has suggested. The territory’s seemingly excessive slave
regulations illustrated the immediate necessity planters felt in stabilizing their institutions
and communities in the most expedient way. Slave codes which counteracted not only
the Spanish system of relative slave autonomy, but also limited plantation contact with
free blacks or Seminoles, were necessary to “insure against slave flight or rebellion.” In
this way, both historians contend, dangerously harsh codes were written not in the desire
to culture a prosperous plantation economy for the future, as was the case in the more
developed Old South. Instead, they evinced the immediate threat of slave insurrection or
flight, which drove the demand for immediate, preemptory action.63
Through treating with the Creeks and designing an extensive catalogue of slave
codes, the territory’s first legislators initiated steps to both dispossess the Seminoles of
their slaves, and minimize the interaction they shared with the region’s plantations. The
next logical step necessitated dealing with the Seminoles in their own right. And here the
worst news quickly became apparent to the Seminoles. General Jackson, under whose
command the most offensive of the First Seminole War invasions were conducted, was to
be appointed acting governor. Who else was better suited for the territory? He knew the
62
Rivers, 8-9; Canter Brown, Jr., “Race Relations in Territorial Florida, 1821-1845,” Florida Historical
Quarterly 73 (January 1995): 287-289.
63
Rivers, 8-9.
28
terrain well, and his capacity “for ruthless action would be useful in stabilizing the
situation there.”64
Almost immediately after cession he had, along with other authorities, begun
viewing both only the Seminole and black settlements with considerable apprehension.
They were dangerous, they needed to be removed, and it had to happen as quickly as
possible.65 Jackson communicated one such appraisal to the secretary of state in spring
of 1821, as he recommended all Seminoles be immediately removed to Creek country.
“Whatever may be the President’s instructions upon this subject shall be strictly obeyed,”
Jackson wrote, “and likewise in relation to the negroes who have run away from the
States & inhabit this country and are protected by the Indians.”66 Three months later,
acting Indian Agent Jean Peñieres passed his own judgment to the newly appointed
Jackson in his Indian report, noting that if it became necessary to use force with the
numerous negroes present in the region, it was to be feared “that the Indians would take
their part.” Peñieres had no doubt that the black settlements had to go, however, “among
whom runaway negroes will always find refuge.”67 Jackson promptly forwarded those
observations to the secretary of war, citing also the necessity to remove the Seminoles,
that “this must be done, or the frontier will be weakened by the Indian settlements, and be
a perpetual [harbor] for our slaves.” The runaways, he added, must be removed, “or
scenes of murder and confusion will exist, and lead to unhappy consequences that cannot
be controlled.68
64
Peters, 64.
Mahon, 31.
66
Commissioner and Gen Jackson to the Secretary of State, April 2, 1821, TP 22: 28-29.
67
Penieres to Gen Jackson, July 15, 1821, ASPIA 2: 411-412.
68
Gen. Jackson to Secretary of War, September 2, 1821, ASPIA 2: 414.
65
29
Two years later, Commissioner James Gadsden, appointed to treat with the
Seminoles, also warned of the necessity to have the blacks exiled. In his observations, he
noted that “an Indian population…connected with another class of population which will
inevitable predominate in Florida, must necessarily add to natural weaknesses, and
endanger the security of one of the most exposed, but important frontiers of the Union.”
Furthermore, the Indians in the area were reportedly well connected with the Cuban
fishermen in the area of Charlotte Harbor, and “to this cause principally has been
ascribed the encouragement hitherto given to absconding negroes & savage depredations
committed…” Nothing short of a military post would be successful in stemming this
“illicit traffic.”69 Governor Jackson again counseled the secretary of war on the situation,
agreeing with Gadsden that troops would be immediately necessary to “overawe the
Indians, and keep down the insurrection of the Blacks, of which there must be a large
number in the Floridas at some future date.”70
The territory’s earliest authorities recognized the danger posed by the presence of
blacks in the region, and moved as quickly as possible to have them apprehended or
removed. Ultimately, the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, completed in September, 1823, at
least somewhat provided for this necessity. In that agreement, chiefs and warriors were
directed, forthwith:
To be active and vigilant in the preventing the retreating to, or passing through, of the
district of country assigned to them, of any absconding slaves, or fugitives from justice; and
further agree, to use all necessary exertions to apprehend and deliver the same to the agent, who
shall receive orders to compensate them agreeably to the trouble and expenses incurred.71
69
James Gadsden to the Secretary of War, June 11, 1823, TP 22: 695-696.
Andrew Jackson to the Secretary of War, July 14, 1823, ibid.: 719-720.
71
Kappler, 204.
70
30
Slavery was not the only stipulation provided for in the treaty. In fact, at article
six, it was not near the top. Yet, “inasmuch as the presence of fugitive slaves among
them was one reason the white men were determined to force them out,” John Mahon
suggested, that provision was of particular importance to the Seminoles.72 Their presence
ran contradictory to the development of the frontier and of the plantation system which
had, to that point, been successful in its emigration from the Old South. The territory’s
legislators, civil and military leaders realized the threat, and moved as quickly as possible
to have it neutralized.
72
Mahon, 47. See also: Peters, 69.
31
Chapter Three
The Agency
If the appointment of their “old conqueror” made for a scary proposition to the
thousands of Seminoles or blacks in the territory, and his suggestions regarding their
removal an even more dangerous one, they must surely have found relief in October
1821, when the General withdrew from the territory and his governorship, never to
return. His commission had been a sort of consolation appointment, after all, as the once
Major General had been slated to lose his position after a drastic reorganization cut the
army roughly in half. On the other hand, according to both Mahon and Peters, Jackson
seemed like the ideal candidate for the position, as he had commanded so successfully the
1817-1818 expeditions; he was well acquainted with the country, and more importantly,
was even more well equipped to deal with the Indian character. He surely was not
appreciative of his appointment, however, as he had was slow to accept his commission,
did not assume the position for four months, and left three months later.73
Nevertheless, shortly after the General’s withdrawal William Pope DuVal was
commissioned to the first permanent governorship of the territory in April of 1822. He
also assumed the role of ex-officio Superintendent of Indian Affairs for his territory, a
subjoined position by virtue of his office. The position included no extra compensation,
73
Mahon, 30-31; Peters, 64.
32
but under his control would be appointed one agent, and any number of subagents.74
Governor DuVal was a southerner, born in Virginia in 1784, and a devout Democrat. He
grew up on the frontier, and spent his early years as a professional hunter before moving
to practice law in Kentucky. Elected as a Representative to the Thirteenth Congress in
1813, he resumed the law in Kentucky after failing to gain reelection in 1815. His tenure
in Florida began as a United States judge of the East Florida district, where he was
appointed in May of 1821.75
According to one historian, as a frontiersman the governor “learned not only the
art of hunting but also the ability to handle pioneers.” In addition, James Owen Knauss
elaborated, he became “filled with the spirit of the robust individualism of the West, the
spirit which nurtured Andrew Jackson and so many others.” With drive and abilities such
as these, DuVal seemed like a fine appointee with the character necessary to govern a
frontier such as Florida. Yet, he was also individualistic, self-confident, and brave to the
point of recklessness; above all, he was hot headed, and these faults at times detracted
from his ability to lead and influence others in times of upheaval. He was quick to blame
others, and his emotional government many times seemed tainted by an almost personal
enmity of his detractors—Indian or white.76
Under his superintendence, the Indian agency was thrust onto a volatile and
confusing frontier in 1822. At least with the superintendency came the framework of the
Indian Office, which was not a new concept by that time. The necessity of Indian agents
74
Commission of William P. DuVal as Governor, April 14, 1822, TP 22: 469. For information on the
connected role of governor and Superintendent, see Secretary of War to Governor DuVal, June 11, 1822,
ibid.: 453; and Editor’s note, ibid.
75
Biographical Directory of the American Congress (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1961),
839. Hereafter, Biographical Directory; James Owen Knauss, “William Pope DuVal, Pioneer and State
Builder,” Florida Historical Society Quarterly 11 (Jan 1933): 97-100.
76
Knauss, 97, 102.
33
had developed steadily after the passage of the second intercourse law in 1793, which
provided measures to civilize many of the tribes. To aid in these endeavors, the president
was authorized to “appoint such persons, from time to time, as temporary agents, to
reside among the Indians, as he shall think proper.” By the time Florida had been gained
through annexation, according to Francis Prucha, temporary had been dropped from the
title. Permanent Indian agents began assignments in various tribes, and were soon
indispensable elements in the management of Indian affairs.77
Agents’ positions and duties, for the most part, paralleled the development of the
Indian intercourse laws. They were to maintain the confidence of the Indians, as well as
keep their interests connected to those of the United States. In the specific cases where
the intercourse law made those broad instructions insufficient, their duties were then
specified, in order that both the law and peace could be maintained. Additionally,
subagents were also commissioned, but were usually done so in special circumstances—
sometimes as assistants to agents, sometimes to separate locations and given duties
similar to agents. Regardless of their position or purpose, they were accountable to the
agent, who was in turn accountable directly to the governor.78
Directives to the governor and agent in the dealings of Indian Affairs came
directly from the Secretary of War and his Department until 1824, when Thomas
McKenney was appointed to the newly created Bureau of Indian Affairs. McKenney
quickly referred to the Bureau as the Office of Indian Affairs, however; and from his
position, he oversaw annuity payments, expenditures by the various agencies under the
Department’s direction, and the claims or controversies which arose over intercourse
77
Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (2
vols., Loncoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984) 2: 161.
78
Prucha 2: 161.
34
regulations. Strangely however, McKenney’s actual status was only that of an
administrator, and officially he lacked the authority to enforce the orders he was
appointed to direct from his position in the War Department. That power still lay under
the discretion of the Secretary of War—technically, McKenney was only another clerk.
A separate and autonomous superintendence would not pass into law until 1832. Yet,
while McKenney loathed his seemingly ineffective position, through the early years of
the Florida Agency he channeled the power of the War Department through his Bureau
with every means at his disposal and with remarkable energy. “Tall and slender,
outgoing but aristocratic,” McKenney became an extremely able liaison between the
territorial Florida government and Washington; both Governor DuVal and Agent
Humphreys respected his authority as such.79
Where the influence of the Indian Office became insufficient, however, and
military force became necessary, agents were supposedly provided with the authority to
employ the assistance of nearby forces. Commanders were often given express
instructions to aid agents in the enforcement of their duties, Francis Paul Prucha
maintained, and were called upon in times of true upheaval. Sometimes this meant
patrolling the boundaries, keeping Indians within their limits, and preventing
confrontations. Other times excursion parties arrested Indians or whites suspected of
committing depredations, and helped give a sense of security to an otherwise lawless
region. In some instances, commanders were wary to exercise such force without explicit
orders from their superiors in the War Department, or to take orders from civilian
officers. Generally, as Prucha concluded, for the most part the officers were “able and
79
Prucha 2: 164-165; Robert M. Kvasnicka and Herman J. Viola, The Commissioners of Indian Affairs,
1824-1970 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 3-4.
35
devoted supporters of the government and of the intercourse laws,” and provided
invaluable assistance.80
For a number of reasons, the case in Florida taxes this assumption distressingly.
“The military sent to this post not being under my command,” DuVal complained to the
Secretary in one of many crises, “and I think they should have been, were of no use, to
me in stopping, the Indians in their course…I cannot omit to impress on you the
importance of having a respectable force in this quarter…”81 Forces in the region—at St.
Augustine, Pensacola, or Tampa—were too far removed from the Indian or white
settlements, both DuVal and Humphreys consistently groused. At the same time, a
misunderstanding of the power vested in agents or superintendents to call regular troops
into action was at its most painful threshold when their presence was needed most
urgently. A regular, powerful military presence was usually necessary, it seemed; and it
was either never authorized, or never available.
The other alternative—the militia—was unreliable to the point of being almost
totally useless. As George Bittle suggested, Florida frontiersmen were, for the most part,
far too independent or too busy to form any trustworthy militia force. Through the 1820s
and 1830s the minuteman system developing in the nation remained “totally
unorganized” in Florida. DuVal, as territorial governor, had power to muster and direct
any volunteer militia party as he deemed necessary. In times of the most severe
depredations, some of these forces came together and achieved some measure of
80
81
Prucha 2: 166-168. See also: Mahon, 51-52.
DuVal to Secretary of War, July 19, 1824, TP 23: 22-23.
36
defensive success. Usually, however, settlers ignored every federal or territorial militia
ordinance adopted, and the men that did muster were almost completely inept.82
In most cases, as Prucha maintained, the success of the agency was directly
“depended upon the character of the man.” The agent did, after all, project his power
through the confidence of the Indians under his control, and by the authority he
commanded over the whites in his region. Although both McKenney and DuVal were
empowered to give the agent advice, and although the military was available as a last
resort, the most critical responsibilities devolved directly upon Humphreys and his
discretion. Acting with broadly defined powers, Indian agents became powerful men in
Indian affairs, and it was hoped that by their personal influence alone, the conflicts
arising between whites and natives could be resolved.83 Humphreys’ agency was no
different.
Once appointed, Humphreys was to report to DuVal as soon as he arrived from
his home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He would be required to report to DuVal,
Secretary of War Calhoun instructed the Governor, “from time to time,” and keep him
informed of anything that might be interesting relative to the Indians. DuVal, in return,
was required to forward what he deemed interesting onto the Department. Moreover, the
Secretary directed DuVal, the Florida Agency would be funded to include one agent, one
subagent, and both were to report directly to him.84
Humphreys, however, was not the first Indian agent to operate in the Florida
territory. Captain John R. Bell had been appointed acting agent in 1821 by Governor
82
George Cassel Bittle, “In the Defense of Florida: The Organized Florida Militia from 1821 to 1920”
(PhD diss., Florida State University, 1965), 13, 17, 22, 29-30; Mahon, 52, 59.
83
Prucha 2: 163.
84
Secretary of War to Governor DuVal, June 11, 1822, TP 22: 452.
37
DuVal, and exercised that power while a permanent commission was being readied by
the Department. Moreover, Jean A. Peñieres had been acting subagent in the Territory
since 1821, and upon his death from yellow fever, Peter Pelham was appointed in his
place in October.85 Only in May of 1822 was Gad Humphreys commissioned by
President James Monroe to the Florida Agency, and was requested to report to the
governor in Tallahassee.86 His commission superceded John Bell’s acting agency, which
had evidently come as a difficult decision for the Department.
When the appointment of the agents was made, Secretary Calhoun assured Bell,
“I laid your name, and that of Lieutenant Col. Humphreys who was also an applicant,
before the President for the appointment of Agent in Florida. After due consideration, the
President nominated Col. Humphreys.” Both the Colonel and Captain Bell had been
released from the army in the same reduction which trimmed General Jackson from the
service. As a result, however, Col. Humphreys, “and his present means of support” for
himself and family in Massachusetts, gave him a most urgent claim “to the patronage of
the government.” It was, the Secretary confessed, one of the “hardest cases” of the late
reduction.87
The captain had recently been charged with conduct unbecoming an officer, tried
by a general court martial, convicted, and then had the verdict overturned by the War
Department. Yet the selection of Humphreys over himself was not based on this incident,
the Secretary of War consoled Bell. In fact, the captain had been in the territory for
almost a year as acting agent, and was considered by the Secretary in a greater capacity
85
DuVal to John Bell, September 28, 1821, ibid.: 220; Secretary of War to Jean A. Penieres, March 31,
1821, ibid.: 26-27; Secretary of War to Peter Pelham, October 29, 1821, ibid.: 264.
86
Commission of Gad Humphreys as Indian Agent, May 28, 1822, ibid.: 429-430; Mahon, 35.
87
Secretary of War to John R. Bell, June 1, 1822, TP 22: 450.
38
“and experience in the affairs” of the Indians of Florida—Humphrey’s financial situation
was simply more of a priority. “Under this view,” the Secretary concluded, “you will see
that the appointment of Col. Humphreys was in a degree unavoidable, and was not made
in preference to yourself, or from any diminution in your capacity.”88
Humphreys’ arrival, though, would not come for quite some time. Two months
after his commission, Secretary Calhoun addressed the agent, requesting him to “make
immediate arrangements” for his departure to Pensacola, where “it appears that the
presence of the Indian agent there is indispensable.” Furthermore, the agent had not yet
forwarded the bond required by the government for service. “Any omission,” warned
Calhoun, “or unreasonable delay on your part, to comply with the above order, will be
considered as a resignation of your office,” and a replacement appointment would
immediately be made. Less than a month later, the Secretary reiterated the order, adding
that if not heard from by October, the agent will have been considered as resigning his
office.89
Humphreys returned the Calhoun’s ultimatum in early October, assuring
Washington that he would depart for Florida by November 18 at the latest. “I am glad to
hear you will be prepared to take your departure,” the Secretary replied, though he
continued that Humphreys had better not be late, as he was scheduled to meet a
delegation of Seminoles in St. Marks two days later.90 As that date approached, the agent
was nowhere to be found; he missed the scheduled meeting, and was thoroughly
88
For Bell’s court martial, see Editor’s note: ibid., 409; Secretary of War to John R. Bell, June 1, 1822,
ibid.: 450.
89
Secretary of War to Gad Humphreys, August 19, 1822, ibid.: 509-510; Calhoun to Humphreys,
September 10, 1822, in Letters Received by the Secretary of War, 1801-1870, record group 107, microcopy
221A, roll 95. Hereafter, LR SW.
90
Secretary of War to Humphreys, October 18, 1822, TP 22: 532.
39
exasperating an already panicky acting Governor George Walton. Walton had been
frustrated multiple times over, according to John Mahon,“his nerves near the snapping
point” on account of DuVal’s absence and an outbreak of yellow fever in Pensacola,
which was threatening his friends and family. The absence of the agent only
compounded these difficulties, and Walton had absolutely no idea what the government
was planning as far as Indian affairs. All he knew was that a delegation of Indians had
traveled to meet the agent at St. Marks, and when they arrived no one was there. Only in
late December did Humphreys appear and assume his authority.91
The agent had certainly not impressed his superiors as far as punctuality.
Compounding the difficulties created by his absence, the subagent Pelham fell ill while
he was still at his home in Massachusetts. His duties were performed by Captain Bell,
and then assumed by Abraham Eustis in August 1822.92 In the months after his arrival,
DuVal commissioned Horatio Dexter as subagent to the eastern Indians, in St. Augustine,
in an effort to alleviate the burden placed on Humphreys, who had finally arrived and was
presently in St. Marks. A year later, Owen Marsh was commissioned subagent in
addition. Beginning in 1824, after a full two years of considerable chaos, the Seminole
Agency was finally taking form.93
With a subagent now in the area of east Florida, Humphreys could focus most of
his attention at St. Marks and the Indian affairs of that region. His post was selected
because of its relative centrality to many of the Seminole chiefs, and acting Governor
91
Ibid.; Acting Governor Walton to the Secretary of War, December 8, 1822, ibid.: 577; Acting Governor
Walton to the Secretary of War, January 9, 1823, ibid.: 598; Mahon, 37-38.
92
Secretary of War to Peter Pelham, June 24, 1822, TP 22: 474; Secretary of War to Abraham Eustis,
August 21, 1822, ibid.:, 513; Abraham Eustis to Peter Pelham, July 21, 1822, ibid.: 498.
93
DuVal to Horatio S. Dexter, May 10, 1823, ibid.: 681; Calhoun to DuVal, August 17, 1824, in Letters
Sent by the Office Indian Affairs, 1824-1882, record group 75, microcopy 21, roll 1, page 181. Hereafter,
LS OIA; McKenney to DuVal, February 21, 1825, ibid.: 361; McKenney to DuVal, February 22, 1825,
ibid.: 365.
40
Walton directed him there upon his arrival in December 1823.94 Regardless of Dexter’s
position near St. Augustine, however, Humphreys’ duties also required periodic
presences there, in Pensacola, Central Florida, and even Tampa at times; the agent
traveled constantly. He was directed to St. Augustine by the Secretary of War in June
1823, for instance, to help assist with the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, which was to take
place in September. Humphreys had requested a leave of absence to visit north, but
Calhoun denied his application, noting that until the treaty was signed, “your services are
considered indispensable.” In order to best aid the treaty commissioners, Calhoun
concluded, “you will repair to St. Augustine where you will be stationed until further
orders.”95
For the first few years of the Seminole Agency, all Humphreys could do was
shuttle himself among these places, as an actual Agency house did not yet exist. Its
location had to be on or near the Indian boundary so as to effectually control their
intercourse and keep up normal communications. Until a treaty had been finalized, and
the survey of a reservation boundary completed, acting Governor Walton had advised
Humphreys, it would be impracticable to begin designing or building one.96 Shortly after
the close of the treaty, however, such terms had been met, and Governor DuVal wasted
no time in asking the Secretary for directions in constructing the establishment. “The
necessity of the Agent of Indian Affairs, speedily making his establishment, and taking
94
Acting Governor Walton to the Secretary of War, January 9, 1823, TP 22: 598.
Secretary of War to Humphreys, June 30, 1823: LR SW, r. 95. For further information concerning
Humphreys’ role in aiding the commissioners with the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, see “Minutes of
Proceedings of James Gadsden:” ASPIA 2, 431; and James Gadsden to Secretary of War, June 6, 1823, TP
22: 694. James Gadsden, one of the commissioners, was informed that Humphreys was to assist in the
treaty, and was located at St. Marks. Gadsden wrote Secretary Calhoun in June, however, complaining that
Humphreys could not be found; in consequence, they were being forced to treat directly with the
Seminoles without the assistance of the agent.
96
Acting Governor Walton to Gad Humphreys, January 21, 1823, TP 22: 601.
95
41
up his residence in the Country allotted to the Florida Indians, will readily occur to you,”
the governor asserted. He was “unacquainted with the usual practice” of the department
in commencing with the business, however, although he supposed the buildings should be
funded by the department as the Indian officials were not paid near enough to afford
building anything.97
Almost a year later, however, by November 1824, no satisfactory progress had
been made in the establishment of the house. DuVal directed Humphreys “forthwith” to
select a site near the center of the Indian population, and on as good of land and water as
could be found.98 Nothing respectable appeared, however, and Humphreys was forced to
again wait until the northern boundary had been raised to include a large hammock area
known as the Big Swamp. In early 1825, the boundary line had been formally altered,
and the agent again got the go-ahead to select a site. Superintendent McKenney wrote
DuVal to direct Humphreys in that endeavor, “about which it appears owing to a want of
a salubrious spot within the hitherto ceded limits, he found some difficulty.” A site
picked, and layout generated, the agent forwarded his plans to the department in
September 1825. The location, Humphreys argued, “appears most valuable and
important” for the purpose of the Agency. It was located “in the direct line of
communication” between the whites and Indians of the region, and thus gave, “in an
extensive degree, the power to regulate and [control] the intercourse between them.”99
At a price of five thousand dollars, the plan would cost the department over
double its usual allowance—a cost McKenney replied was totally inadmissible. “The
97
DuVal to the Secretary of War, September 26, 1823, ibid.: 746-747.
DuVal to Humphreys, November 27, 1824, TP 23: 115.
99
McKenney to DuVal, February 25, 1825, LS OIA, r. 1: 378; Humphreys to McKenney, September 20,
1825, TP 23: 323.
98
42
maximum allowance for a building, council house, and all necessary appendages, cannot
be permitted to exceed two thousand dollars.”100 The governor relayed that news to the
agent, but also replied to McKenney that nothing was more difficult “than to procure
working hands” in their area, and to get them all the way out to the Agency was going to
be expensive. Two thousand dollars would not complete even the buildings “absolutely
necessary for the Agency.” When the “unusual [expense], in a remote situation, in a
Southern and interior” region was factored in to the Agency’s construction, added
compensation would be necessary, even to put up the most “rude buildings.”101
Eventually, the Agency was successfully constructed with DuVal’s help, and General
Duncan Clinch recognized the necessity of establishing a military presence in the area.
He dispatched two companies from Fort Brooke, in Tampa, to the site, and ordered the
erection of a fortification approximately a quarter of a mile from the Agency house.
Under the command of Lieutenant J. M. Glassell, construction of Cantonment King
began late in March, 1827, and was finished soon after.102
DuVal’s assistance with the agent in the building of the Agency evinced the
governor’s early confidence in the government’s selection. The Moultrie Creek
commissioners, one of whom was the governor, further commended the agent on his
abilities during the treaty negotiations in late 1823, where Humphreys rendered them
“essential services during the complicated difficulties” encountered.103 Yet, in fall of
1824, when it came time to begin transferring large numbers of Seminoles to their
100
McKenney to DuVal, November 12, 1825, ibid.: 355.
DuVal to McKenney, January 23, 1826, ibid.: 423; DuVal to McKenney, March 2, 1826, ibid.: 452-453.
102
Mahon, 66.
103
Indian Commissioners to the Secretary of War, September 26, 1823, TP 22: 751.
101
43
Central Florida reservation lands, Humphreys was nowhere to be found. He had left to
visit his family in New England, without properly alerting the DuVal.104
“I am directed by the Secretary of War to direct you to report yourself,” McKenney
admonished Humphreys in October, “with as little delay as possible to [Governor]
DuVal, and resume forthwith the duties of your agency.” The Secretary threatened him
personally less than a month later, reminding him that “the public service has for some
time required your presence at your agency.” If he had net yet left Pittsfield, Calhoun
directed, he was thereby required to leave immediately. “Any further delay will be
viewed, by the President, in the light of a resignation.”105 Luckily, Humphreys was
already on his way back when Calhoun’s letter reached Massachusetts, and upon his
return, the governor’s complaints quieted.106
A great deal of friction continued in the proceeding year, however. A severe
drought and other complications concerning the Seminole’s first season in their new
reservation nearly resulted in war; in the panic, the governor lost his temper. Humphreys
returned to his Agency late in the spring of 1825 from his absence and arrived to witness
the Seminole emigrants in extreme destitution. The recent drought “has been so severe
that the crops of the Indians are, in some instances, wholly destroyed,” he observed. The
recently relocated Seminoles would be the hardest hit, as they had just begun planting
new fields, and had no other subsistence to rely on. “I am greatly apprehensive,” he
feared, “that this failure of crops will produce much distress among these people” unless
104
Mahon, 54.
McKenney to Humphreys, October 7, 1824, LS OIA, r. 1: 210; Calhoun to Humphreys, November 26,
1824; ibid., r. 1: 240.
106
Mahon, 54.
105
44
Figure 4. Location of the Agency
This map of government land included the location of the Agency at the bottom right of a surveyed, 1000acre parcel. It was advantageously located on roads connecting Tampa Bay, the St. John’s River, Alachua,
and several large Indian towns. Also located near Silver Springs and close to the Ocklawaha River, the
Agency appeared impressively positioned on the edge of the reservation. Taken from Territorial Papers.
45
Figure 5. Plan of the Agency House
This survey of the Agency house included a scaled floor plan and frontal view. The building was very
spacious at over sixty feet square; it included four large meeting rooms, wide hallways, and large porches.
For its isolated location, the Agency was a very impressive structure. Taken from Knetsch, Florida’s
Seminole Wars, 1817-1858.
46
plans were made to provision them above what had been authorized by the Department.
It would probably not be a permanent necessity, he alerted McKenney, “but humanity
seems to require, that some provision should be made to meet the cases of actual
want.”107
The emigrating Seminoles were allowed up to one thousand rations per day by the
Treaty of Moultrie Creek. In consideration of the recent drought, however, Humphreys
asserted to acting Governor Walton that the number had to be increased. One ration per
day per Indian was Humphrey’s solution, and he immediately began authorizing
additional orders to be supplied at depots on Tampa Bay and the St. John’s River.108
Walton, who was again filling in for DuVal while he visited Kentucky, evidently
misunderstood the crisis, and did not agree with the agent’s actions. The issue of rations
had “greatly exceeded” the number which, even in the most extreme case, had been
calculated by the Department for the Indians. Over eighteen hundred rations were being
distributed each day, he added—almost double the stipulated thousand.109
Upon DuVal’s return late in 1825, the governor seemed almost insulted by the
developments. “The arrangement which I had made…were ample.” He was “impressed,
strongly and confidently, that no want of provisions would be felt by the Indians entitled
under the treaty to draw rations.” The agent’s directions had simply “not been attended
to.” Under no condition, he fumed, “was the agent to issue more rations than had been
specifically contracted for,” and Humphreys had evidently disregarded that order
107
Humphreys to Superintendent of Indian Affairs, May 14, 1825: Sprague, 26-27.
Humphreys to Walton, May 25, 1825, ASPIA 2: 634.
109
Walton to Barbour, November 18, 1825, ibid.: 639.
108
47
completely.110 “The responsibility which the Agent, Colonel Humphreys, has thrown
upon me, by not conforming to my instructions,” he complained directly to Secretary of
War James Barbour, “has not only surprised me, but has seriously deranged my whole
plan for the government of the Indians in this quarter.”111 DuVal was losing his temper
with Humphreys over his over-issue of rations, and lashed out at actions he considered a
direct disobedience to both McKenney and the Secretary of War’s direct orders. The
Department wanted to know what happened, and soon McKenney ordered an
investigation into the affair, including the agent’s over-issue of rations, as well as his
seemingly willful allowance of the Indians to roam outside of their border. Should the
agent’s actions be concluded as “indispensable,” McKenney directed DuVal, he was
directed to pay for the rations, and make their allowance possible in the future on the
same principle.112
The time allowed for the investigation must have given DuVal the chance to cool
down. When he completed his inquiry, the governor had completely reversed his
judgment of Humphreys’ conduct. The drought, he began, had caused a larger number of
Indians to apply for rations than the Department had calculated. As more Indians
appeared, the number of rations simply fell short. As a result, Humphreys over-issued
above what the Department authorized, and allowed the Indians out of their boundary to
scrounge for food. “I am perfectly satisfied that the agent has acted properly in this
manner,” DuVal concluded, “as he apprized the acting governor that large issues had
become necessary, after the back rations had become exhausted.” So far from censuring
him, the governor felt confident that Humphreys had simply discharged his duty. “I
110
DuVal to McKenney, December 2, 1825, ibid.: 640-641.
DuVal to Barbour, December 12, 1825, ibid.: 642.
112
McKenney to DuVal, December 26, 1825, ibid.: 642-643.
111
48
approve of his conduct, and regret that justice should, for a moment, have detracted from
his services and merit.”113
DuVal had finished his investigation by commending the agent for his faithful
service. Yet, the depth of the governor’s unhappiness with Humphreys in the early weeks
of the crisis was surprising. DuVal had illustrated his tendency for hot-headedness, and
his temper had flared startlingly when confronted with Humphreys’ perceived
insubordination. Deflecting responsibility not only from the agent, but from himself,
DuVal later confided to McKenney that there were settlers who had remonstrated against
the agent loudly during the confrontation—actions “calculated to injure the character of
the agent, Colonel Humphreys.” Those “clandestine attempts,” were the real culprit in
the controversy that ensued—not his overreaction. Luckily, DuVal assured the
Department, he felt assured that those animadversions had “no influence on your
department.” There was much “restless disposition in all new countries to interfere and
direct the conduct of the officers of Government,” he earlier wrote, “and so strong a
temper to complain” which came on the part of interested frontiersmen in the region.114
These frontiersmen had evidently been affronted by the agent’s actions in saving
the Indians from starvation, and the region from war. The Indians knew it, and thanked
him in a statement of their own. As John Mahon has argued, “If in 1824 Gad Humphreys
had been inattentive to duty,” he later began to make up for it through these tough times.
It the disagreements between the Indians and the whites preceding the emigration crisis,
“bit by bit he began to emerge as a champion of the Indians.”115 In 1827, still dealing
113
DuVal to McKenney, March 15, 1826, ibid.: 692.
DuVal to McKenney, January 10, 1826, TP 23: 409; DuVal to McKenney, January 2, 1826, ASPIA 2:
643-644.
115
Mahon, 59.
114
49
with accusations stemming from his early government of the Indians, he confronted a
grand jury investigation in St. Augustine. “I shall,” he began, “as I have ever made a
point to do, act honestly but independently, regardless of the interested murmurings and
calumnies of the malevolent and discontented spirits of the land.” The territory was filled
with “reckless adventurers from all quarters of the globe,” he retorted, and actions
designed to protect the Indians would surely make him the “object of vituperative assault;
but for these I care not, so long as I am sustained by a consciousness of my own rectitude
of purpose.” Humphreys had, he proclaimed, chosen for himself a line of conduct “from
which I have never wittingly deviated—one, to be sure, that has given me much
difficulty, and subjected me to severe and illiberal animadversions, but one which will
nevertheless, I feel a comforting certainty, eventually bear me triumphantly through the
trying ordeal of public opinion.”116
The agent’s campaign against his “reckless adventurer” detractors proved
effective—he was never threatened with removal. Yet, while his decisions had
won him the respect of the Indians under his control, they had certainly not won
him the respect of many Floridians. The worst fight, one building slowly through
his earliest years at the agency, was soon to mirror that unhappiness to a much
more extreme degree. The emigration and ration crises had illustrated the agent’s
conscientiousness, but also his hardheadedness. It had also taxed his relationship
with the department and with a number of influential citizens. It put him at odds
with the DuVal, most importantly, and succeeded in unleashing the governor’s
hotheaded, volatile personality. Slave claims would soon bring out the worst in
the agent, the worst in the governor, and the worst in the territory.
116
Sprague, 39-40.
50
Chapter Four
Slave Claims
Another difficulty in the territory, Lieutenant Sprague noted early in Origin,
increased “from day to day, and which ultimately led to open rupture”—that difficulty
was the emerging controversy over runaway slave claims. Sprague noted the emergence
of that controversy heavily in the pre-war chapters of his study. As Mahon suggested, he
underrepresented many of the struggles, and especially the slavery controversies. That
maybe true. Yet, the time he did spend discussing the years 1821-1834 was dictated by
the story of Gad Humphreys—the story of slave claims. And Sprague examined that
difficulty with a pointed suspicion.
Regardless of their degree of bondage, the Indians certainly held slaves.
Eventually, a primary source of enmity quickly sprung from their naiveté in that position,
when juxtaposed against slaveholders and a new American jurisdiction; they simply did
not understand the legal system in which they now existed. “Here was a splendid
opportunity for white men,” Sprague charged, “greedy to acquire able-bodied slaves, to
make extravagant claims.” Efforts were made to take these slaves by force—legally, or
otherwise.117
Attempts had, after all, proven effective in the years before Florida had been
acquired. The spectacularly violent destruction of Negro fort in 1816 produced a small
number of slaves, and Jackson’s First Seminole War advance on the town of Suwannee
117
Sprague, xv, 34; Mahon, vii.
51
threatened a large number of black families, who only narrowly escaped.118 In addition,
very shortly before the territory’s change of flags, a major expedition of Creek and
Coweta warriors penetrated deep into the peninsula, striking black settlements around
Tampa Bay and farther south. Hundreds of slaves were reportedly captured and whisked
out of the territory for sale. The raiding party was over two hundred strong on Tampa
Bay alone, taking from that place “about 120 Negroes[,] after destroying four Spanish
settlements.”119
After Florida became an American territory, these efforts for the most part ceased;
slaveholders rejoiced in the movement of jurisprudence into their region. Soon,
numerous citizens began petitioning territorial officials, who had taken the preliminarily
steps necessary in having once lost property returned. Marshal James Forbes, for
instance, informed Secretary of State John Quincy Adams in July of 1821 that a Georgia
man had recently arrived in St. Augustine. This particular slaveholder was attempting to
prove his ownership of a runaway slave boy freed by a Spanish court shortly before the
cession. In the spirited controversy that followed, however, the case was twice
adjourned, “at which violent arguments were held” and a further recess taken. Two
weeks later, Forbes reported back that the case was still in suspense “by the conduct of
the citizen of Georgia,” whose actions, the Marshal added, had been “highly disgraceful
and reprehensible.”120
118
Covington, “The Negro Fort,” 79-91; Missall, 41; Rivers, 191-192.
James Forbes to Secretary of State, July 17, 1821, TP 22: 118-119; Secretary of War to John Bell,
September 28, 1821, ibid.: 220-221. For more information on the Coweta Raid, see Canter Brown, Jr.,
Florida’s Peace River Frontier (Orlando: University of Central Florida Press, 1991), 21-23.
120
James Forbes to the Secretary of State, July 14, 1821, TP 22: 118-119; James Forbes to the Secretary of
State, July 29, 1821, ibid.: 136.
119
52
Numerous other slaves were being held in St. Augustine’s recently renamed Fort
Marion. Notice of their capture was posted in local newspapers and prospective owners
were encouraged to come forward and prove their right of property—a directive
presaging the legal precedent set in 1824 by the Acts of the Legislative Council, which
mandated the practice with all runaways. Should they remain unclaimed, they were to be
sold to pay public expenses. In a similar confrontation over these slaves, a John M.
Carter approached authorities to obtain an entire family being held there, including
children. While a military tribunal investigated the case, however, he evidently grew
impatient and attempted to carry the slaves off forcibly. In what resulted, Carter
“subjected himself to an arrest,” was released on his own recognizance, and was required
to attend a criminal court hearing “to answer for the offence.”121
The desire for slaves was bringing out the worst in the region’s slaveholders, no
doubt anxious to get their hands on valuable property, which had just recently become
much more available. As the Indian Agency became established, these efforts were
increasingly channeled through its agents and the governor/superintendent. Secretary of
War John C. Calhoun first directed Indian agent John Bell in his roll, notifying the
captain that the government expected all the slaves who had run away, “or been
plundered from our citizens or from Indian tribes within our limits,” would be given up
peaceably by the Seminoles. They would do so when demanded by him, and after he had
received sufficient proof of the claim’s justice.122
Provisional agents, like Bell, were appointed on an irregular basis—when
required to regulate trade between the area’s settlers and Seminoles in the earlier years,
121
John Bell to Acting Governor Worthington, August 20, 1821, ibid.: 179. For 1824 Legislative Council
Act concerning the return of fugitive slaves, see Acts 1824: 291.
122
Secretary of War to John Bell, September 18, 1821, TP 22: 220-221.
53
and before permanent positions were created. Quickly, however, they were pressed by
aggressive frontiersmen to issue trading licenses, many for the purpose of buying Indian
slaves. Considerable anxiety existed in the territory, subagent Abraham Eustis wrote the
Secretary in 1822, on behalf of a large number of citizens who urgently desired the ability
to trade in Indian settlements. Several had already applied to him for these rights,
ostensibly for various trading purposes. Eustis immediately recognized that many were
interested primarily in slaves, and the subagent was unsure whether to grant requests
under these pretenses or not. In asking Calhoun for directions, he wondered if these men
should be allowed the right at all—“If yea, under what restrictions?” He also enquired as
to whether contracts over slaves made before the transfer, “which have not been yet paid
for, or delivered,” could now be completed.123
Whether Secretary Calhoun directly responded is unknown. In July 1822,
however, one of Governor DuVal’s first acts in office answered the subagent’s queries
definitively, proclaiming that “no person or persons shall be permitted to purchase of an
Indian residing in the Territory any cattle, hogs, horses or slaves,” unless by the express
permission of Col. Humphreys, himself, or the president. Clearly evincing his early
consideration for the sovereignty and property rights of the Seminoles, DuVal worded his
proclamation sternly. Those violating the trade or intercourse laws were subject to arrest
and prosecution. It also forbid settling in or close around Indian settlements, and anyone
found there would be “liable to be removed by military force.” The moratorium, agent
Eustis confided to the governor two months later, would without a doubt preempt such
123
Abraham Eustis to the Secretary of War, July 23, 1822, ibid.: 496.
54
“unlicensed trade.”124
DuVal updated his decree less than a year later, proclaiming all
licenses issued by acting agents up to that date “to be null and of no avail.” Once again,
the governor forbid “any person or persons whatsoever from trading with any Indian”
within the territory, without a license issued directly by either agent Humphreys or
himself.125
With aggressive frontiersmen effectually held at bay by late 1822—denied the
ability to acquire slaves through legal trade—DuVal first turned his attention to their
allegations, and confronted a delegation of chiefs on the subject of runaways in July. If
he had illustrated his concern for the Seminoles’ rights in slaves, he soon clarified his
support for the claims of the settlers to many of them. “If you Chiefs will have all the
slaves belonging to the white men who have run away to Florida brought to the post of
St. Marks,” he offered, “you shall have what is right.” DuVal promised to reimburse the
chiefs for their “time and trouble.”126 Calm and obliging, he must have anticipated little
agitation over the subject.
As the Treaty of Moultrie Creek concluded in 1823, government focus shifted
away from intercourse and trade, and dealt primarily with readying thousands of
Seminoles for their trek deep into the peninsula and onto a newly surveyed track of
land.127 Consequently, the subject of slavery was not given much notice, and DuVal’s
next report came more than a year later. His previous talk evidently had not produced the
participation he expected, however, and runaway claims were lately coming in with more
frequency. Writing to Secretary Calhoun, DuVal alerted Washington of this distressing
124
Proclamation by Governor DuVal, July 29, 1822, ibid.: 504; Abraham Eustis to DuVal, September 22,
1822, ibid.: 548.
125
Proclamation by Governor DuVal, June 7, 1823, ibid.: 694.
126
Governor Duval’s talk with Seminole Chiefs, July 1822, ibid.: 503.
127
For information on the treaty, see Mahon, 46-47.
55
development, noting that the territory’s citizens had numerous slaves “running at large”
in the region, and he appealed to Calhoun to converse with the president over the subject.
Moreover, the territory lacked a sufficient force to have them apprehended. The force
that was available was not even under his or the agent’s control. Owners “continually
solicit me to send a force to take them,” he complained, yet a military command was
necessary, and he had none. His position as ex-officio superintendent did not allow him
control over army regulars for use in Indian affairs. Without that ability, and unable to
provide for militiamen should they even be authorized, he continued, neither he nor the
agent was able to comply with their constituents’ wishes. He recommended a force of
fifty or sixty mounted militia, at least, to be placed under Col. Humphreys’ command
near the Agency, along with “such Indian force as may be deemed necessary.” That
detachment could then be sent into south Florida, he continued, and directed to disburse
the large settlements of blacks along the southwest Florida coast (most likely those on
Charlotte Harbor), apprehending as many fugitives as possible. He hoped the president
would see “the importance of authorizing me to act speedily” in arresting the fugitives—
not only because their presence was dangerous, but also because he could do nothing
about it.128
The use of force in issues like these and in future cases was a particularly sore
point for both for the governor and Agent Humphreys. Continually they were pressed by
settlers to have military deputations enforce their demands, whether relative to
controlling the Indians within their limits, or having runaways forcibly seized. In 1824,
Colonel George Mercer Brooke moved four companies from Pensacola to Tampa Bay to
secure the southern boundary of the treaty lands and established a permanent, sizable
128
DuVal to the Secretary of War, September 23, 1823, TP 22: 744.
56
military presence there. Citizens felt secured by these forces, yet they blamed both
DuVal and Humphreys when the regulars there were not employed in having disputes
solved. That was not in his power, the governor complained; he could only request
Colonel Brooke for troops—he could not order them.129
The same conditions applied in 1827, when Lieutenant J. M. Glassell marched
two companies from Fort Brooke to the Agency and established Fort King. As with
Brooke’s command, Lieutenant’s Glassell’s force was doubtless designed primarily to
assist the Agency in policing the Indians. Still, Fort King’s troops had to be ordered
through Glassell, and through the War Department, not directly through a civilian officer
such as DuVal or Humphreys. Moreover, with militia usefulness being considered “more
of a troublemaker than a fighting force,” as Mahon suggested, and with DuVal’s inability
to sustain or compensate them, there was almost no incentive to have them organized.130
Complaints from citizens, however, continued to solicit such authority. In an
October 1823 petition to the president, a number of residents soon made the request
direct. While Florida was under Spanish control, they explained, the peninsula was a
veritable haven for fugitive slaves from both South Carolina and Georgia. These
planters’ slaves had been lured there and protected by both the Indians and the Spanish,
“so that from the date of the Revolution up to the change of flags, it has been utterly
impossible for your petitioners, and other sufferers, to reclaim their property.” To make
matters worse, many of the petitioners had located their fugitive slaves, yet were unable
to retrieve them—a result of the regulations designed to restrain their trading with the
Indians and enforced by the Indian Agency. To “arrest these inconveniences,” the
129
130
Mahon, 52, 59, 66.
Ibid, 59, 66.
57
petitioners called on the president directly to “exert his ample power” and restore to the
citizens their “long [deferred] rights.” If the governor was to be given power to
investigate their claims, for instance, and a tribunal erected to “test the right of property,”
the redress which so many citizens were searching for, to their “long and continued
wrongs,” might be secured.131
The secretary of war answered the petitioners a month later, lamenting however
that the property they spoke of was within the possession of the Indians when the
territory was acquired. The Department did not know enough about the existence of
runaways and their numbers, nor the relation in which they stood to the Indians. As a
result, the commissioners made no real provision in the treaty for their surrender when it
was concluded in 1823. Furthermore, the secretary wrote, the president simply did not
have the authority to establish the suggested tribunal without such an agreement.
Asserting Washington’s reluctance to force compliance in such matters, the secretary
informed the citizens that they could only petition Congress, who the secretary had no
doubt, would “promptly attend” any request made on the subject.132
Many of the memorialists did just that. Six months after their first attempt,
several petitioned Congress. In more explicit terms, they complained that “before the
cession of Florida to the United States, the Indians within the limits of the
Territory…were in the constant habit of stealing, or enticing away the slaves of the
people of Florida, as well as those of the adjacent states.” When the change of flags took
place, when the petitioners “were admitted to the protection of the laws of a powerful and
wise government,” they “flattered themselves, that their property would no longer be held
131
132
Petition to the President by Inhabitants of the Territory, October 4, 1823, TP 22: 762-763.
Secretary of War to Samuel Cook and Others, November 30, 1823, ibid.: 820-821.
58
from, but the Indians would be compelled to surrender to their proper owners the
runaways among them.” As yet, however, “the hope of your memorialists has not been
realized.” 133
The commissioners were unable to include the restoration of slave property as a
provision of the Treaty of Moultrie Creek. And without a clear provision, there evidently
was no foundation for military coercion. Without this military force, Agent Humphreys
had declared himself both unable and unwilling to interfere. A special tribunal was
necessary, they again concluded, but they would welcome anything else Congress “may
deem expedient” to remedy the situation.134
In a correspondence which illustrates these early difficulties, Humphreys had
previously explained to a Georgian, John McIntosh, his inability to assist in the man’s
claim. McIntosh had written the agent in 1824, requesting aid to remove his slaves from
the Indians. Instead, Humphreys answered that he had not yet been issued any specific
instructions relative to the runaway issue, “but to adopt as practicable means to prevent
their further escape or removal until the question of ownership be fully decided.”
Humphreys admitted that the government’s future role in such cases would be
“impossible for me to say,” but that he would forward the request to Governor DuVal for
his consideration. McIntosh had heard nothing from the agent in some time, however,
and pleaded his case directly to Secretary Calhoun. He had located his runaways, and
had actually traveled into Florida to have them returned. He failed in that endeavor,
however, “there appearing to be no authority in the country vested with powers from the
General Government” to enforce his requests. “I beg leave to…sincerely hope that the
133
134
Petition to Congress by Inhabitants of East Florida, March 8, 1824, ibid.: 857-858.
Ibid.
59
government will speedily adopt some rule of identity by which the property may be
rescued,” he further chided the Department, “before it is to late.”135
Superintendent McKenney received the man’s letter through the secretary of war
in early 1825. He wrote Governor DuVal in response, though he echoed in it
Humphreys’ admissions that the government had “no power to adopt a rule of identity by
which the property may be recovered.” Without any provision in the treaty, all the
Department could do was direct DuVal to “afford every possible facility to Mr. McIntosh
to enable him to identify his property—which may serve him whenever Congress may
adopt a provision for its restoration.” The effectiveness of the Agency with directives
such as these would be negligible at best.136
Later that year, while DuVal was away on leave, acting Governor Walton
received numerous claims, and evidently also more of the same orders from the war
department concerning them. He relayed those to Humphreys in May, including “letters
from individual claimants.” As with Governor DuVal’s order, Humphreys was directed
to assist claimants in any way possible. For Humphreys, that meant enabling the
claimants, as best he could, to identify their property. Continuing with somewhat more
positive instructions, however, in all cases where the “validity of the claim is clearly
established, and no other obstacle arises to prevent it,” Humphreys was to seize the slave
and have him/her delivered to the proper owner immediately. Any sort of trial in these
circumstances would not be necessary. “Let the chiefs distinctly understand,” Walton
added, “that they are not to harbor runaway negroes, and that they will be required to give
135
John N. M. McIntosh to J. C. Calhoun, January 16, 1825, in Letters Received of the Office of Indian
Affairs, 1824-1881, record group 75, microcopy publication 234: Seminole Agency, roll 800. Hereafter, LR
SEM.
136
McKenney to DuVal, February 3, 1825, LS OIA, r. 1: 339.
60
up such negroes as are now residing within their limits.”137 In addition, agents for the
Creek Nation were pushing Humphreys to deliver their slaves as well. Owen Marsh, then
the subagent appointed under him, was ordered to the Creek Agency in Georgia in June
1825 to litigate one claim in particular, in a dispute between a Creek and a Seminole
tribesman.138
Superintendent McKenney, unsatisfied with the results of the directives outlined
in his February 1825 letter to Governor DuVal, wrote Humphreys again a year later. He
directed the agent to immediately report the number of runaways in the nation, and to
take immediate stops “to restore them to their owners.”139 The newly appointed secretary
of war, James Barbour, had evidently decided to adopt a more assertive role in claims.
Humphreys was to project as much authority as possible to influence the chiefs in this
manner, as McKenney had earlier directed DuVal. The combined petitions of Middle
Florida planters, as well as John McIntosh’s requests, had finally elicited some sort of
response from the Department, however vague its orders might have been.140 Still, the
military forces at Fort Brooke, St. Augustine or Pensacola were not under their direct
control.
McKenney’s directive never reached the agent, as he had gone north on leave.
Subagent Owen Marsh instead responded that any sort of accurate count would be
impossible to attain, “from the circumstance of their being protected by the Indian
Negroes.” Marsh had traveled to several villages for this purpose, but could not find any
blacks who he could positively identify as runaway slaves. They were being hidden by
137
George Walton to Humphreys, May 22, 1825, ASPIA 2: 634.
Humphreys to Acting Governor Walton, October 2, 1825, TP 23: 332.
139
McKenney to Humphreys, February 28, 1826, ibid.: 451.
140
James Barbour to McKenney, March 1, 1826, LS OIA, r. 2: 458.
138
61
the more settled Indian Negroes, he concluded, who were “so artful, that it is impossible
to gain any information relating to such property from them.”141
Secretary Barbour had also forwarded McKenney’s correspondence with
Humphreys to Florida’s territorial delegate in the House of Representatives, Colonel
Joseph White. “The order you have issued will not obtain the object,” White returned to
McKenney in March 1826. “The quo modo must be pointed out, and strict and minute
instructions issued to the Agent.” White included letters from a Superior Court Judge
and an attorney in the Legislative Council, outlining some possible steps in proving
ownership. McKenney responded to the suggestions by acknowledging “the necessity of
giving additional and more spirited instructions to the Agent in regard to the delivery of
the Slaves, &c.” Should his general order to Humphreys “fail of its object,” he assured
White, his suggestions “shall then be immediately acted on.”142
DuVal responded to McKenney’s general directives first, convening another
delegation of chiefs and admonishing them (in much more stern language) to surrender
all runaways under their control. By the treaty, he reproached, they were bound to
deliver to the agent all the blacks they did not own. This, “you have not done, although
you have promised in your talk to do so; you are now called upon to fulfill the treaty.”
Their conduct in the manner, DuVal chided, was the cause of “loud, constant, and just
complaint on the part of the white people, who are thus deprived of their slaves.” Deliver
them up, “and do what, as honest men, you should not hesitate to do.” Should they
refuse, he warned, “I shall order my soldiers to go over your whole country, to search
every part of it, from time to time, and seize on all runaway slaves by force.” In the
141
Owen Marsh to McKenney, May 17, 1826, LR SEM r. 800.
Delegate White to McKenney, March 6, 1826, TP 23: 462; McKenney to White, March 14, 1826, ibid.:
470.
142
62
confusion, the Indians might lose their own slaves, but the fault “will be your own, in
trying to keep that which does not belong to you, and you will have no right to
complain.” Deliver the fugitives, “or immediate chastisement will follow your neglect;
for I will order my soldiers from Tampa Bay to scour the country, and drag the runaways
from their hiding-places, and make your nation suffer for its neglect and violations of the
treaty.”143
Beginning to illustrate his increasing unhappiness over the matter, DuVal not only
forwarded the proceedings of that talk to Secretary Barbour, but he also wrote McKenney
and complained to him personally. “I am more and more convinced that the slaves
belonging to the Indians are a serious nuisance,” he wrote. It was a “great misfortune”
that they held slaves in the first place, and should be allowed to sell them away. “If this
was done,” he continued, “you would never hear of the planters complaining that their
slaves were constantly running away from them into the Indian nation.” There had been
no less than four men at the Agency just recently, he added, pushing their claims on him
personally. Perhaps the agent should be given permission to purchase some of the slaves
for the use of the Agency. Moreover, the territory’s citizens should be permitted to do
the same, by contracts negotiated through Humphreys (as to “avoid all misunderstanding
or fraud.”)144 DuVal had first recommended this course to the superintendent a few
months previously: “I have never permitted in a single instance any white man to
purchase a negro of an Indian,” he confided in January. “But I am convinced the sooner
143
144
Copy of a Talk Delivered, ASPIA 2: 690.
DuVal to McKenney, March 2, 1826, TP 23: 454.
63
they dispose of them the better.” With demands increasing by every mail, he had become
even more certain of the necessity to remove them in any way possible.145
Within a week of DuVal’s second letter to McKenney on the subject, citizens
reasserted their own mounting displeasure, again petitioning the president. This time, St.
Johns County residents complained of their continued suffering in relation to the runaway
issue: that without adequate resolution in the matter, they would “never be able to recover
their property.” Again reminding Washington of its fundamental oversight, the
petitioners learned from DuVal that the governor’s command was not backed by “a
sufficient force to execute his orders.” Without this security, they warned, they would be
forced “to abandon their plantations on the River St. Johns, and in the county of
Alachua.” Power had to be put under the governor’s control ample to retrieve runaways
and prevent further losses. The weak association of the Indian Agency with the military
force in Florida was clearly lacking. “Should government withhold her protecting hand,”
they concluded, “your memorialists must be ruined, or driven to make reprisals on the
Indians which may end in a war of extermination.”146
Meanwhile, DuVal kept the pressure on McKenney with another heavily worded
letter. “I herewith transmit to you a paper,” he began, as a sample of claims “which have
been and are daily present to the Agent and myself for slaves” argued to be in the Nation.
It was these claims, he asserted, “which have in a great degree, occasioned do much
dissatisfaction with the claimants as well as with the Indians.” It was absolutely critical,
he closed, that the Department adopt measures and prescribe specific rules under which
145
146
DuVal to McKenney, January 12, 1826, ibid.: 413-414.
Memorial to the President by Inhabitants of St. Johns County, March 6, 1826, ibid.: 462-463.
64
these claims may be decided.147 Both he and Agent Humphreys, the governor continued,
were almost constantly engaged in persuading the chiefs to deliver slaves; some had done
so, yet many more slaves were still daily claimed. Were slaves and other valuables taken
by the Seminoles in the skirmishes associated with the War of 1812 to be returned,
DuVal asked? In addition, numerous whites had deceitfully persuaded Indians into
selling their slaves shortly before the state’s acquisition, or otherwise defrauded them
under threats, and for “trifling sums of valuables.” Many slaves had since re-escaped;
they were again under the protection of the Seminoles, and the whites who acquired them
wanted them back. “Ought this property so obtained,” DuVal inquired, “under these false
representations, now be delivered up to such claimants?”148
The difficulty and trouble associated with the controversies, DuVal bemoaned, “is
incalculable.” Clearly frustrated by the situation, yet showing his resolve, the governor
lamented that he could not consent to “that sort of left handed justice which gives all that
is demanded of our citizens, & which withholds justice from this cheated and persecuted
race.” Again soliciting a military command, a post associated with the Agency was vital.
“I assure you it is all important to secure the rights of the Indians as well as the peace of
the country.”149
Yet, in his own right, DuVal had achieved at least some measure of success
flexing power through his own influence as superintendent. In response to another of his
stern talks with the chiefs in late February 1826, the Indians had evidently delivered up a
large number of the slaves in the nation. The governor commended himself for the
success of his talk, noting that “my presence has done much to effect this and bring the
147
DuVal to McKenney, March 17, 1826, ibid.: 472-473.
Ibid.
149
Ibid.
148
65
nation into order.” At the same time, however, he again mourned the injustice seemingly
calculated against the Seminoles by the never-ending requests for runaways flooding the
Agency. “I wish you would converse at large with Col Humphreys,” he deplored to
Superintendent McKenney, “as to the manner these people have been cheated and
imposed upon by some of the Inhabitants of Florida.”
The persons who have been more clamorous about their claims on the
Indians for property are those who have cheated under false reports, these people
of their slaves who have since gone back to the Indians. I have been adjudicating
on these claims for some time almost daily since my arrival here. The justice
which the Indians are entitled to they cannot obtain, while they surrender to our
citizens the slaves claimed by them, their own negroes that have been taken from
them and are held by white people who refuse to deliver them up—I have felt
ashamed while urging the Indians to surrender the property they hold, that I had
not power to obtain for them their own rights and property held by our citizens.
The government should have their property restored to them or pay to the Indians
the value of it. To tell one of these people that he must go to law for his property
in our courts with a white man is only adding insult to injury. I pray you ser will
hear the agent on this subject who is possessed of many facts, highly deserving
the attention of your department. I have taken the most unwearied pains to have
justice done to all parties but I confess—the Indian under the laws of the United
States at present has but little share in its advantages.150
McKenney finally answered DuVal’s salvo of letters in May 1826, but did not
give the governor the news he was doubtless searching for. The Indians, he stated
plainly, “must be protected on the one hand from the press of the White people, of which
you speak; and the white people from the depredations of Indians, on the other.” The
intercourse law alone would be the basis for this “mutual protection,” however, and its
enforcement was enjoined upon him as governor, subject to the approval of the
Department. Furthermore, no buying or selling of slaves would be permitted by Agency.
If the Indians owned slaves, they were their property. Yet, “if they secrete runaway
slaves, they must give them up to their rightful owners.” In relation to those taken by the
150
DuVal to McKenney, March 20, 1826, ibid.: 483. See also: Mahon, 61.
66
whites, “the law of intercourse must be resorted to.” The vague and unhelpful
communication must have disappointed DuVal, who found no definitive instruction or
comfort in the superintendent’s reply.151
The chiefs were also responding to continued accusations of harboring runaways
with a measured increase in suspicion. They had replied to a particularly stern one,
written by James Barbour, but delivered by Humphreys in May. “Your great father has
heard that you have runaway slaves in your country,” the secretary charged, “and that
many of your people hide them from their owners.” Barbour reiterated article six of the
Treaty of Moultrie Creek, emphasizing that they were required to give them up, and that
they would, “as soon as a slave runs into your country, take him up and deliver him to the
agent for his rightful owner.” The secretary of war reasserted the necessity of complying
with that provision. He then acknowledged the injustice of which DuVal spoke. It had
been said, the secretary admitted, that some slaves of the Indians were being held by
whites. The agent, he reminded the chiefs, was directed to see justice done them, and
“whenever he finds your slaves in possession of the whites to demand their surrender.”152
Answering that talk, chief Hicks responded with disappointment. “We do not like
the story that our people hide the runaway negroes from their masters,” he began. The
nation did not find itself bound by the treaty to return those slaves they had in their
possession before the treaty agreement was made, only those which had escaped into the
country after 1823. Regardless, they had never opposed whites coming into the nation
when they had conclusively located and identified their property, and would not
“hereafter oppose their doing so, but will give them all the assistance we can.” At the
151
152
McKenney to DuVal, May 8, 1826, TP 23: 535-536.
James Barbour to Delegation of Florida Indians, May 10, 1826, ASPIA 2: 697.
67
same time, however, they were determined to retrieve their own slaves. And the constant
press of slave claims—many for slaves which clearly belonged to the Indians—was
beginning to strain their relationship with the territory’s authorities. “The laws of the
whites, who have so much better sense than the red men,” Hicks complained, “ought not
to be less powerful and just.”153
Agent Humphreys, who delivered Secretary Barbour’s talk and recorded the
chiefs’ responses, shared Governor DuVal’s early uneasiness—including his desire to
have the Indian slaves sold away if possible. He noted to acting Governor McCarty more
than a year later, in September 1827, that numerous applications “from a very respectable
citizen of this vicinity,” were seeking to purchase several Indian blacks. In his opinion,
there was no question that it would prove a mutual beneficial transaction. The blacks
were, he described, “only slaves in name.” They were treated in no fashion consistent
with anything he had ever seen on a plantation, and the influence they exercised over
their Indian masters was particularly instrumental in the heightening distrust of whites by
the chiefs. Here, the blacks held the most power, portraying settlers as being hostile to
“all who differ in complexion.” And, with “the recollection of the many acts of injury
and injustice, which the Indians have received from their white brethren, it may be easily
imagined, would make them give ready credence to these cunning suggestions of their
negroes; whom they look upon, rather as fellow sufferers and companions in misery than
as inferiors.”154
In January 1827, Joseph White reasserted to McKenney and the Department his
desire to adopt definitive instructions relative to slave property, remarking that he had
153
154
Talk by the Delegation of Florida Indians, May 17, 1826, TP 23: 549-550.
Humphreys to Acting Governor Walton, September 6, 1827, ibid.: 911-912.
68
actually begun receiving numerous complaints, “by almost every mail.” It was
suggested, he continued, that the only “effectual means of preventing & remedying the
evil” would be the delivery of the slaves to the Superior Court for trial.155 McKenney
immediately responded that with every disposition of the Department to secure justice for
Florida settlers, he did not know what was legal beyond the Intercourse Act of 1802. He
had written Humphreys a year previous, directing him to ascertain the locations of
runaways, and pressing him, as agent, to exert all efforts in seeing them returned to their
owners—a correspondence McKenney emphasized to White. McKenney reissued that
order to the agent the same day he returned White’s letter, but Humphreys was again
away north, and was to return shortly. “Would it not be advisable for all concerned to
forward descriptive lists to the Agent?” McKenney instead counsled. Reiterating his
earlier directives to both DuVal and Humphreys, McKenney suggested that having the
two men assist in identifying the fugitives as well as they could would “doubtless
facilitate the recovery” of these citizens’ property.156 Humphreys had maintained that
his influence as Indian agent was in many cases insufficient to affect these ends, or force
compliance with runaway demands. It is not easily perceived how McKenney thought
further elucidation of this line of thinking would facilitate the claims process.
Nevertheless, Humphreys’ personal influence was deemed sufficient; again, the
Department skirted the Agency’s request for more powerful alternatives.
After Humphreys returned to his office in August, he immediately received
another request to purchase slaves, this time by a Mr. F. C. Fatio. The agent forwarded
155
White to McKenney, January 7, 1827, ibid.: 717.
McKenney to White, January 7, 1827, ibid.: 718. See also: McKenney to Humphreys, January 8,1827,
LS OIA, r. 3: 300. “The Secretary of War directs me to call your attention to an order addressed to you, of
the 28th February last, and to require your immediate and prompt attention to its execution.”
156
69
the request to acting Governor McCarty, who communicated it to the War Department in
October. The letters implicitly reopened the debate over the Agency’s ability to purchase
slaves; McCarty also asked for an explanation of the laws regarding licenses and trading
with the Indians, which might be of assistance in future cases. McKenney responded in
December that “the title is understood to be in the Indian; and his right to sell or refuse to
sell is not questioned.” It was decided by the secretary of war, however, “that no
purchases can be made either directly or indirectly by any agent of the Government in the
service of the Indian Department.” The agent was directed to see that justice be done to
the Indian in all cases, but was not to “commit the Government in any way, either as to
the title of the Indian to his slave, or in any other way.”157
Meanwhile Delegate White, flooded with requests and complaints of his own,
grew tired of the Department’s apparent inability to decide the matter by May of 1828,
and resolved to converse with the secretary of war directly. “The repeated complaints I
have received in relation to fugitive slaves,” he wrote, “make it necessary that some
certain mode should be adopted for the more speedy & satisfactory decision of these
questions.” Rather than endorse the use of military force to simply pry the slaves away,
White requested that Humphreys be issued orders referring all claims to the Judge of the
district, and that the Judge be empowered to decide and report the cases to the
Department, “so that an order may be issued on the basis of a judicial decision.” This
157
L.C. Fatio to Humphreys, August 31, 1827, in Letters Received of the Office of Indian Affairs, 18241881, record group 75, microcopy publication 234: Florida Superintendency, roll 287. Hereafter, LR FLA;
McCarty to Secretary of War, October 24, 1827: ibid.; Thomas McKenney to Acting Governor McCarty,
December 18, 1827, TP 23: 952.
70
method, White concluded, “will greatly promote the harmony of that part of the country
& save the department itself a number of vexatious and difficult investigations.”158
Evidently, the new secretary of war, Peter B. Porter, agreed with White’s
suggestions. Less than a week after White’s letter to the Department, McKenney wrote
Governor DuVal requesting that he direct agent Humphreys to forward all claims to the
Judge of the district. Should the Judge’s decision be in favor of the claimants, DuVal
was to order the slaves delivered in pursuance of that decision. As per legal custom, the
white claimant would be allowed to hold the property during the trial, upon providing a
bond sufficient to abide by any future legal decisions, or return the property should the
claim be in favor of the Indian.159
Judge Joseph L. Smith of St. Augustine, selected for the purpose of settling these
claims, accepted his responsibility in December. He complained, however, that his
adjudication was still subject to a final decision of the governor, who would to then order
the agent to deliver the claimed slave to its owner. “If such construction be adopted,” he
warned, “a delay will ensue…in a great measure doing away the benefit of the
arrangement made with the War Department.” Delivery, he argued, should be made
instantly upon his decision. He was more than willing to take the position, he continued,
but it had to be prosecuted to both parties’ success. Smith did not mean any disrespect to
the governor, he maintained, or to usurp his authority as Superintendent. “My object is
solely as expressed that the arrangement should be efficiently beneficial and acceptable
both in regards to the Indians and the whites.”160 Once again, the Department agreed.
McKenney wrote DuVal a week later, informing him that no other judgment in addition
158
White to the Secretary of War, May 1, 1828, TP 24: 6.
McKenney to Governor DuVal, May 5, 1828, TP 24: 8.
160
Judge Smith to Joseph M. White, December 4, 1828, LR FLA, r. 287.
159
71
to Smith’s would be necessary, and that claimed slaves were to be delivered over
immediately upon that decision.161
Escaping a lack of provision in the Treaty of Moultrie Creek the Department,
through Delegate White’s suggestions, seemed to have solved the issue of force. The
authority complication would be routed through a system in which property claims could
be tried by a formal judicial hearing—a process expounded by legislators and Judge
Smith as one “efficiently beneficial and acceptable” to all parties: Seminoles, blacks, and
settlers. It was doubtless thought that the process would be equally embraced by both
parties; the reluctance of the chiefs to accept the authority of the Agency, after all, and
the unwillingness of the agent to seize demanded slaves without explicit authority, were
the issues which had originally developed such controversies out of the claims. A
judicial hearing would, it seems, solve all of these discrepancies.
Soon, however, setbacks associated with the trial system mounted. White
claimants were required to deliver a bond to the court which sufficiently covered the
worth of the slave, for instance, thus assuring they would not attempt to steal the slave
away without trial. They were also required to surrender the slave if their property right
was denied by the hearing. In return, the Indian claimant was required to surrender the
claimed slave or slaves to authorities before trial. In many cases, the Seminoles were
unwilling to do this. They agonized—in many cases legitimately—that regardless of the
judicial decision they would never again see the claimed bondsmen; fraudulent or
insufficient bonds threatened the theft of the blacks by the white claimants in many
instances, one way or another.
161
McKenney to DuVal, January 2, 1829, LS OIA, r. 5: 251.
72
The Seminoles’ intransigence in the matter enraged DuVal, who doubtless also
felt slighted by the removal of his control over the claims in general. The governor
delivered a blistering talk to a delegation of chiefs in the summer of 1828, threatening to
deny the Seminoles the annuity money guaranteed by the Treaty of Moultrie Creek,
unless they surrendered all of the claimed runaways. Humphreys recorded their reply and
forwarded it to the secretary of war for examination. “I do not think the whites will be
satisfied as long as we have a negro left,” Chief Hicks complained. “Those which this
angry talk of the governor is about we know are the property of the Indians, who have
bought them and honestly paid for them, they do not belong to any white person.” The
chiefs recoiled against the idea of the governor withholding their payments even more
bitterly, arguing its unethical purpose and illegality. They did not agree with the annuity
stoppages, “but if the white people want it and have a right to it they must keep it.”
162
In his first confrontation with DuVal since the ration crisis in 1825, Humphreys
agreed with the chiefs. Shortly after the talk, Humphreys wrote Judge Smith complaining
of the governor’s threat, and enquiring into its legality. Smith retorted that he knew of
“no right or equity in withholding from the Indians their annuity, because they do not
give up to white claimants property which they allege is their own.” By the Intercourse
Act of 1802, stoppages in annuity could be ordered, or compensation to whites be
subtracted from it, only in response to Indian depredations. Even then, a stoppage could
only be made upon proof, Smith concluded, “If I recollect the law correctly,” by an order
of the President.163 Humphreys also complained to Secretary Porter of the governor’s
162
Substance of Talk held with the Indians, enclosed in Humphreys to P.B. Porter, September 10, 1828, LR
SEM, r. 800.
163
Smith to Humphreys, October 13, 1828, LR FLA, r. 287.
73
actions in September, and Judge Smith forwarded the subject to Delegate White in
December.164
As the framework for the trying of slaves was just being constructed, a
considerable disagreement between the agent and the governor was brewing at the
Agency, and Humphreys wasted no time confronting his superior. As John Mahon has
noted, “the two principle men grappling with the Indian problem in Florida seemed to be
developing opposite attitudes toward their native charges.” On the one hand, Humphreys
had supported the Indians consistently during the first six years of his tenure. “He spoke
so strongly in their defense” during the 1825 crisis, Mahon suggested, he earned a grand
jury indictment. The controversy over slave claims had just undergone a promising
development to him, as he doubtless viewed judicial hearings as the best possible
course—one which would provide the Indians under his direct control the most security
from rapacious citizens.165 Where Humphreys had sided with the chiefs during the 1825
ration crises, and sustained them to the enragement of a number of legislators, he became
almost totally sympathetic to their claims of property rights through 1827 and 1828. He
heard the complaints they made over the mounting claims from settlers, and he began to
recognize then with an increasing suspicion.
DuVal, “who seemed to show less and less sympathy for the Seminoles,” was not
so passionate. Where Humphreys viewed the Seminoles with this respect, and the whites
with a calculated distrust, DuVal had developed the opposite viewpoint. He had, on the
one hand, made the earliest and most protective measures regarding slave controversies,
including a total intercourse moratorium. Yet, for his measured compassion, the
164
Humphreys to P.B. Porter, September 10, 1828, LR SEM, r. 800; Judge Smith to Joseph White,
December 4, 1828, LR FLA, r. 287.
165
Mahon, 69.
74
governor more importantly favored the region’s settlers. As a faithful Democratic
administrator, he valued the area’s rural development above all other concerns—
particularly those dealing with Indians and their supposedly free blacks.166 In the
imminent confrontation, the governor did not agree with Humphreys’ course of action,
the Department’s decision on how to have claims decided, or Smith’s power to adjudicate
the cases. Instead, leaning on his authority as Superintendent and as Humphreys’
superior, he moved to usurp the Judge’s appointment, and ordered the agent to seize
slaves without the required judicial hearing.
He ordered Humphreys to deliver one slave to a claimant while letters were being
exchanged establishing the judicial hearing. Humphreys complained of this action to
Smith in the same letter in which he alerted the Judge to the annuity stoppage. Property
in possession of the Indians, Smith answered, could not be seized from them “but by
treaty, by their consent, or by decision of courts of justice. General principles would
forbid it, and I have seen no special statue, conferring such power on superintendents or
agents.” Smith also apprised White of the governor’s course. These actions, predicated
upon the ex parte statements of the area’s settlers, were usually fraudulent; even if they
were truthful, the concept of having the slaves seized on those statements alone still
critically undermined the theory of a judicial hearing, and his authority as Judge.167
Humphreys, receiving this sort of reaffirmation in combination with unwillingness to
deliver the slaves generally, doubtless ignored the DuVal’s order. Though they had
worked together smoothly for almost five years—where DuVal had “the utmost
166
167
Mahon, 69.
Smith to Humphreys, October 13, 1828, LR FLA, r. 287; Smith to White, December 4, 1828: ibid.
75
confidence” in Humphreys as “active, and energetic”—the agent and governor were
beginning to move in separate directions under the pressure of slave claims.
76
Chapter Five
Mrs. Cook and Mrs. Hannay
When the relationships between agent Humphreys and both the governor and
Department began to deteriorate around issues associated with slave claims, no two did
more damage than the claims of Margaret Cook and Mary Hannay. Like many others,
both petitioned the Agency through attorneys, and demanded slaves they argued had
runaway or been stolen by various Seminoles. Unlike most, however, at least one of the
women were widows. They were no doubt forced by their difficult financial situations to
retrieve any sources of income their estates had once possessed—slaves were valuable
properties, and they desperately sought their return, whether rightfully or not. Through
their attorneys, these women pressed the agent relentlessly to have several slaves
returned. Eventually, their two claims became heated controversies between Humphreys
and both their lawyers and his superiors, damaging the ties between the agent and the
Indian Office in irreversible ways.
In the first of these claims to appear, Mrs. Cook had sought numerous runaways
through a number of claims, and eventually succeeded in receiving most of those
fugitives through the Agency. Still, she charged, more were in the nation, and
Humphreys was inconsistent in providing delivery. Pressured by her lawyers over one
fugitive in particular, referred to as Jack or John, Thomas McKenney requested
Humphreys to “procure and deliver” the slave “on the same conditions as she received
77
the other Negroes claimed by her” in January of 1827. Evincing his frustration over the
claim, McKenney ordered the agent to respond with an “immediate answer,” reflecting
the agents’ compliance with his order.168
Frustrated by Humphreys’ apparent indisposition to comply with that request
however, two months later the superintendent began to lose his temper. Frequent
complaints had been made to the Department, McKenney began to Humphreys,
respecting slaves claimed by citizens of Florida; they had all been acted on by the
Department in issuing orders for their seizure that Washington confidently expected
would be obeyed. Investigations were supposed to have been set up, decisions of
ownership made, and slaves delivered. “Nothing satisfactory has been received of you.”
He then ordered Humphreys, by direction of the secretary of war, to attend immediately
to the subject of slave claims “in a general way,” but particularly in the claim of Cook.
The agent was to demand the slaves be delivered to Cook, immediately following her
submittal of a bond with sufficient security to abide by the decision of Judge Smith’s
decision. He was also ordered to ensure a mutual cooperation, by satisfying the Indian
claimants “of the propriety and justice of the course”—a position he had continually
argued was becoming more impossible to maintain. The chiefs were increasingly
unwilling to surrender slaves with each proceeding claim, whether bonded or not, until
the right of property had been decided upon. Acknowledging the predicament,
McKenney instructed Humphreys to ensure the chiefs that the claim had been properly
set up, “and that this act is merely to secure the property until the right is decided, when if
it be in them they will be restored.”169
168
169
McKenney to Humphreys, January 7, 1828, LS OIA, r. 4: 235.
Thomas McKenney to Gad Humphreys, February 8, 1827, TP 23: 755.
78
McKenney issued this order in February 1827—three months before secretary of
war Peter Porter’s directive treating all cases in such a manner. Soon, Judge Smith was
selected to regularly adjudicate on all controversies. In preparation for such a
proceeding, however, not many people knew what to expect. The white claimants
certainly were not sure. They were, as one interested observer noted, “very anxious” to
ascertain exactly how the trial would be commenced, and before what sort of court. They
were particularly interested, for obvious reasons, to know if Indian testimony would be
allowed, and if so, how it would be weighed.170
The Indians, on the other hand, voiced their extreme displeasure at the idea of
surrendering the black man again to Mrs. Cook, after he had evidently been surrendered
once and escaped. Furthermore, they were incensed over another alleged threat to have
their annuity withheld for noncompliance, and were increasingly reluctant to help the
Agency with anything. “We find that some of the whites are determined,” chief Hicks
complained, “not to let us rest, as long as we have any thing that they want.” Their
warriors did not bring the slave in, the chief asserted, because they considered themselves
“bound to do it.” Instead, they did it because Humphreys had advised them to do so. The
black man was not a runaway, but “was raised in the nation, out of which he has never
been.” He had been bought legitimately, and Hicks angrily resented the concept of
having his supposed worth deducted from their annuity and paid to Mrs. Cook—
especially when they continually argued that the man belonged to them. They could not
agree “that she be permitted to wrong us out of the money which is our due from our
Great Father; and which he has said should be punctually paid to us.” They could not
170
Thomas Douglas to the Secretary of War, June 16, 1827, ibid.: 868.
79
stop the government, he concluded, but if it had to be done, it would be “without our
consent,” and they would think very harshly of it.171
Humphreys forwarded these proceedings to Governor DuVal, noting that the
Indians appeared hurt at the idea of Mrs. Cook getting the slave paid from their annuity—
particularly, he added, upon her own “interested ex parte statement.” The agent took
particular exception to this tactic. Her claims would, he carped, “I hazard nothing in
saying[,]” be found by any investigation to be “grossly if not designedly erroneous.”
Humphreys could not believe that the Department would “for a moment” consider so
“unjust and extravagant” a claim as what Mrs. Cook pretended to demand. “I am
naturally led to infer from the tenor of your language,” he continued, that the Seminoles
were being deliberate and disrespectful in withholding the slave from Mrs. Cook. Quite
to the contrary, he defiantly countered. “The claim, if such an opinion exists[,] it is a
libel upon the nation, and those who have been instrumental in producing it, if it be as I
suppose it must be[,] are those immediately interested in this business.”172
To both Mrs. Cook and her lawyer John Hanson, he continued, he had repeatedly
explained the difficulties and intricacies of the case, both personally and through multiple
correspondences. Through his own influence, he emphasized, the chiefs had brought in
the claimed slave, but only after he repeatedly assured them that Hanson would pay them
the balance of the original purchase money for which they claimed they sold the slave to
Mrs. Cook. The story was much more complicated than what Hanson was pretending.
Allegedly, the original Seminole owner had dealt the slave for a “small pack horse” of
goods, while he was in a “period of intoxication (artfully brought upon him for that
171
Minutes of talk given by head chief, John Hicks, in Humphreys to DuVal, February 14, 1828: Sprague,
57. Original also located in LR FLA.
172
Humphreys to DuVal, August 15, 1828, LR FLA, r. 287.
80
purpose in exchange for his slave).” When he sobered up, he denied the sale, refused the
goods, and left with the slave. Other Indians took and consumed the goods, and now Mr.
Hanson claimed ownership of the slave for Mrs. Cook by a legitimate right of sale.173
Still, Humphreys persisted, he had convinced the Indians to surrender the slave,
and placed him in irons at the Agency. Through the night, however, the slave escaped,
most likely with the help of another black man, and was currently being pursued by more
Seminole warriors. “It is manifest from the foregoing facts,” Humphreys angrily
retorted, “that so far from the nation’s attempting to practice any want of firmness in the
matter towards Mrs. C it is acting with a liberality which might be looked for in vain if
the position of the parties were reversed.”174
Humphreys also returned McKenney’s February order, explaining to the
superintendent that by the time he received the correspondence ordering his participation,
he had already dispatched a fourth search party to retrieve the slave in six months, and it
had just recently come back empty handed. In doing so, Humphreys rehashed an old
argument. He had utilized all means under his ability, he argued, short of issuing a
military force which not only was forbid, but which would have also certainly resulted in
hostilities. And still, the slave could not be recovered. In consequence, Humphreys
bitterly intoned, “I have to ask the Department, what is to be done;” particularly, whether
he had the authority to engage significant army forces from Fort King or Fort Brooke to
utterly coerce a now hostile Indian population.175
The friendly chiefs did not even pretend to dispute the title with Mrs. Cook, he
pressed. Yet they lacked control over the whole of the nation, and the sympathizing
173
Ibid.
Ibid.; Deposition of Francis Richards Junior, March 6, 1829, LR SEM, r. 800.
175
Humphreys to McKenney, March 7, 1828, LR FLA, r. 287.
174
81
parties were simply unable to pry the fugitive away from the Indians and blacks who
were hiding him. His personal influence was manifestly insufficient to gain this
surrender, he argued, and he had tried everything he had authorization to attempt. He had
even sent his own deputation of blacks and horses, at his own expense, to hunt the
runaway. Furthermore, he had exhausted the support of the chiefs that were under his
control, who had become unwilling to continually risk their lives “in a service which has
always been a thankless one.” Just recently one of these pursuits had “proved fatal to one
of the most respected [and] valuable chiefs in the nation,” who was killed tracking down
one such runaway.176
By March, the slave had still not been delivered up, and Delegate White wrote
McKenney that he had received several letters, presumably from Hanson, which
“incontestably” established Mrs. Cook’s right to the property. Recently, however, the
Indian claimant who disputed that right had sold her claim to another white man. If that
was so, White asserted, Humphreys needed to pursue the claim with a renewed vigor, and
have the slave surrendered as soon as possible; there was now no legitimate reason for
the slave to be in the nation. The right of property was then to be taken up by the district
courts, as it had by that sale become a contest between two citizens. Humphreys was
therefore to cancel the bond given by Mrs. Cook in reference to her claim against the
Indian.177 McKenney relayed this order to the agent soon after, also requesting that he
report the proceedings to DuVal, “in order that the Department may be informed thro’
him of the same.”178
176
Ibid.; Deposition of Francis Richards Junior, March 6, 1829, LR SEM, r. 800.
Joseph M. White, March 5, 1828, LR FLA, r. 287.
178
McKenney to Humphreys, March 8, 1828, LS OIA, r. 4: 331.
177
82
McKenney soon received Humphreys’ letter regarding the inability to retrieve the
slave, however. It was expected, he admonished the agent, that if it was in any way
within his means as agent, he would have complied with the order. “The military will not
be employed.”179 His personal influence should, and would have to suffice. Mrs.
Cook’s lawyer soon wrote him directly over the slave, requesting his immediate
compliance. Not yet in possession of McKenney’s correspondence, and unaware that his
request for military assistance had already been denied, the agent answered Hanson that it
was not—yet at least—within his power to comply with his request. “The Indians have
declared their utter inability to apprehend the fugitive,” he stated, in consequence of
which he wrote the War Department and asked for the military aid necessary to have him
surrendered. He was now waiting for its reply. He also informed Hanson that the Indian
contesting her claim, Nelly Factor, had sold her right to another citizen. In the event of
this statement becoming “satisfactorily established,” Humphreys alerted Hanson, Mrs.
Cook’s bond would no longer be necessary, as the case “would cease to be one in which
the U States could take any interest of cognizance.”180
Hanson read the agent’s letter and soon vented his frustration over the situation to
another of Cook’s lawyers, excoriating Humphreys for his almost criminal reluctance to
follow direct, repeated commands. Humphreys cared no more “about the orders of the
Secretary of War” than he did for his own word. If he so chose, Hanson accused, he
could perpetually “find some way” to refuse the secretary’s orders, “let them ever be so
positive.” A “pretty story indeed,” that the whole nation would be so afraid of one slave.
To admit that he could do nothing, Hanson continued, only proved that the agent had no
179
180
McKenney to Humphreys, March 17, 1828, ibid.: 372.
Humphreys to Mrs. Margaret Cook, April 17, 1828, LR FLA, r. 287.
83
authority over the nation, and had to be removed. His most bitter condemnation was
reserved for Humphreys releasing the bond and his implied participation: “now what do
you think of this,” he fumed, “does not the man deserve to be hung.” The slave had to be
found; if not, they would demand from the Government three hundred dollars for him
“and let them pay it and deduct it from the annuity.”181
Hanson forwarded Humphreys’ letter to Delegate White a few days later,
remarking that as the Representative could plainly see, Mrs. Cook was no nearer to
obtaining her property than when the Secretary issued his first order to the agent in
January—an order that Mr. Hanson claimed was “as full and positive as it possibly
could” have been. Contrary to what Humphreys alleged, Hanson insisted that as agent,
he had control over both the forces at Forts King and Brooke, and condemned him for not
dispatching troops to have the slave apprehended. Not only was his assumption wrong,
but had such force been resorted to, it would have met with fierce resistance. Still
Hanson raged. Humphreys’ address to Washington requesting further directions, Hanson
charged, amounted to “nothing more or less [than] to know whether he is to obey the
order of the Secretary of War.” “I am convinced,” he concluded, “that if the War
Department was acquainted with the dissatisfaction that exists among the people of this
Territory generally against Col. Humphreys, he would be removed from office
immediately.”182
In addition, Hanson relayed his extreme displeasure to Governor DuVal, who in
turn forwarded that correspondence to McKenney in May. “My order for the delivery of
the slave being given directly to the Agent, by the Secretary of War,” DuVal stated, “I do
181
182
Mr. Hanson to Mr. Downing, April 30, 1828, ibid.
Mr. Hanson to White, May 7, 1828, ibid.
84
not know what further step I could take to ensure the delivery of the slave.”183 A month
later, McKenney returned the governor’s mail, responding that everything in the power of
the Department had been done, “to ensure to the Citizens of Florida, a restitution of their
property, in the persons of their Slaves.” It was not known, McKenney echoed the
governor, if anything else could be done. Withholding annuity, however—the weapon
DuVal had been lately using to threaten Seminoles into surrendering various slaves—was
“not esteemed to be proper.” DuVal had the intercourse law and that alone to govern
such situations. “Let that be respected and its terms complied with—but further cannot
be sanctioned.”184 This denial must certainly have come as a blow to the governor,
frustrating another attempt to have the controversies resolved.
Hanson wrote DuVal in August, however, thanking him for his kindness and
efforts in the case. He wasted no time thereafter attacking the agent, suggesting that
McKenney was “not perfectly correct” in saying that the government had done
everything in its power. It was true that he had given the agent his orders, but the
Department had not adequately enforced their execution. “Had the agent obeyed the
order he has received,” Hanson emphasized, “there would now be no complaint.” He
also accused Humphreys of improperly improving the Agency and charging personal
work to the government, assuring DuVal that all his charges could be proved. The
controversy between the agent and Hanson had “reached a pitch,” that longer forbearance
on his part, he concluded, would put him at fault.185 By that time, the case had arrived at
183
DuVal to McKenney, May 11, 1828, ibid.
Thomas McKenney to Governor DuVal, June 6, 1828, TP 24: 22-23.
185
M. Hanson to DuVal, August 27, 1828, LR FLA, r. 287.
184
85
the District court, and its proceedings were being watched by Delegate White.186 It is not
known, however, whether the runaway was ever apprehended.
While this controversy was beginning to reach its feverish pitch, the claim of Mrs.
Mary Hannay was developing as well. A black woman named Sarah and her four
children were claimed by Hannay through her agent Archibald Clark, by a bill of sale that
was over thirty years old.187 Clark wrote McKenney that he had personally apprised
Humphreys of the claim, proved to him that the adverse claim of the Indian “could not be
well founded,” and demanded the slaves be surrendered from the chiefs immediately for
trial. “Some considerable time having elapsed,” Clark declared, he rewrote the agent,
suspicious of his indisposition, and urged him to have the slaves delivered, and “abide by
the decision,” of the assigned tribunal. Nothing had resulted from that letter either, Clark
grumbled, and so nothing remained but to address McKenney, “at the head of the War
Office for Indian Affairs,” to remonstrate the “neglect of the Agent,” and respectfully
request that he as superintendent demand the delinquent agent forthwith to see to the
claimed slaves’ capture and trial.188
McKenney responded quickly, ordering Humphreys in early March to deliver the
slaves to Hannay or her agent immediately. He was also to see to it that a bond of
sufficient security be accepted to ensure their complete participation. That order he also
forwarded to Clark, regretting “that so much trouble should have been had on the subject
to which it relates.”189 Two months later, an incensed Clark penned McKenney,
complaining that the bond he had prepared was rejected by the agent. Clark had written
186
J. M. White, May 20, 1828, ibid.
Archibald Clark to McKenney, February 22, 1828, LR SEM, r. 800.
188
Ibid.
189
McKenney to Humphreys, March 8, 1828, LS OIA, r. 4: 330; McKenney to Archibald Clark, March 8,
1828: ibid.
187
86
the terms in duplicate, and for the sum of two thousand dollars—more than adequate—to
“relieve the case from further difficulty,” and guard “as much as possible against
objections that might be raised by the agent” as to its competency. After a delay of over
forty days, Clark noted, Humphreys finally replied that different security would be
necessary; the security previously offered resided outside the territory and as such, was
insufficient.190
“Without knowing more particularly the character of the agent,” Clark was unable
to personally attack him for his actions. “But sir,” he protested, he had asserted upon the
agent the destitute nature of Mary Hannay, who was widowed and with six children.
There was a necessity in her case to keep the expense and grief as much to a minimum as
possible. Security in Georgia—her state of residence—was all that she could provide. In
light of this, Clark contended, Humphreys “certainly does appear to me most absurd and
preposterous to impose upon her the necessity of procuring as securities for her bond,
persons residents of the Territory.” It was almost as if the agent was raising every
difficulty in his power “for the sole purpose of producing embarrassment, delay, and
finally a total abandonment of the claim.” Clark considered any citizen of the nation, “no
matter in what state,” competent security, and demanded that Hannay’s bond be accepted
by the agent. “I extremely regret that I have again been compelled to complain to the
Department of this officer’s conduct,” he closed. “But considering it as I do—highly
reprehensible[—]I cannot but earnestly solicit in behalf of the distressed claimant” the
redress of the Department.191
190
191
Archibald Clark to McKenney, May 26, 1828, LR SEM, r. 800.
Ibid.
87
McKenney quickly wrote both DuVal and Clark over the controversy, lamenting
to the Governor that he regretted “that any unnecessary difficulty” should have been
“thrown in the way of a trial” of these slaves and their ultimately delivery to the proper
owners. DuVal was to immediately order Humphreys to accept the bond, without the
“condition which it appears he has superadded,” requiring the bondsmen be residents of
the territory. “They only question will be are they competent? If they are let the negroes
be given up and the security offered received.”192 DuVal reiterated that judgment to both
Humphreys and Clark, ordering the Agent to accept Clark’s security, and reassuring
Archibald that the agent could add no further condition to the bond other than what the
Department prescribed. If the security was competent, it should have nothing to do with
residency.193
Humphreys received the order, and wrote DuVal over the situation, noting that the
order would be immediately attended to. He could not help, however, but confess the
apprehension that he would find considerable difficulty in judging on the security of the
bond, considering it resided in another state. His situation, Humphreys continued,
“would be awkward and embarrassing in the extreme,” should he accept security that
would ultimately be insufficient to keep Hannay from whisking the slaves away.
Ultimately, Humphreys feared, the opposing Indian claimant, also a woman, would be
left to suffer. He again found himself morally conflicted. On the one hand, he had been
issued explicit orders from the Department—orders which gave him almost no alternative
than to accept the bond, knowing nothing about its competency. On the other hand, he
clearly worried that the bond would ultimately prove insufficient—that the slaves would
192
McKenney to DuVal, July 11, 1828, LS OIA, r. 5: 36; McKenney to Archibald Clark, July 11, 1828,
ibid.
193
DuVal to Humphreys, August 1, 1828, LR FLA, r. 287; DuVal to Archibald Clark, August 1, 1828: ibid.
88
be stolen out of the territory, and that he would be able to do nothing about it. Unwilling
to take the chance, Humphreys again petitioned Washington for specific instructions in
these and like cases.194
He also, however, again accepted the bond, and approached the chiefs with
demands to have the slave family surrendered. Not surprisingly, they refused. They, like
Humphreys, feared that the family would be swept out of the territory before the trial
even commenced, or that regardless of its adjudication, Hannay would not re-surrender
them. Humphreys relayed this information to Hannay’s lawyers, explaining that the
chiefs absolutely refused to let the slaves be taken from the nation in consideration of the
bond Hannay provided. They would, as he had earlier explained, surrender the property
after an investigation and decision had been made adverse to the Indian woman’s claim.
In an effort to compromise, at least, the Indians had consented to surrender the claimed
slaves to the agent, and have them secured at the Agency until the trial had concluded.
Under no circumstance, however, would they consent to surrender them directly to
Hannay or her attorneys.195
Humphreys also apprised the governor of these developments, likewise notifying
him that the chiefs “positively, but respectfully,” objected to the procedure. They were
willing to “cheerfully submit” to the decision of Judge Smith, he reiterated, “but they
wholly refuse their assent to a relinquishment of a possession of the disputed property,
before the matter has been adjudicated upon, and an award given adverse to their claim.”
If force was resorted to in demanding the slaves, Humphreys pressed, they could not
possibly offer any opposition, other than to “appeal to the justice and good faith of the
194
195
Humphreys to DuVal, August 14, 1828: ibid.
Humphreys to H. Lowe, September 17, 1828, ibid.
89
government.” It was regrettable that the trial ordered by the Department could not be
instituted until this sort of surrender had to be made. The system had been calculated to
benefit all, doing much more to settle the “troublesome controversies,” than had any
other option—controversies which were productive “of more ill feeling between the
Indians and their neighbors than all other causes combined.” Yet the necessity of the
Indians to surrender the claim before the trial took place undermined its integrity. Even
worse, the theft of the slaves under supposed bond, and the confrontations which ensued
over security, completely nullified its intended good.196
Archibald Clark, upon receiving word of Humphrey’s letter to Mr. Lowe,
instantly addressed McKenney in October 1828, and proceeded to flay the agent with
remarkable ferocity. Not only was Mrs. Hannay’s agent turned away without the claimed
slaves, but was first delayed several weeks. “Having been twice disappointed in the
recovery of this property,” Clark complained, “and great expense incurred, by one ill able
to support it, I now feel at a loss how to proceed. Too long as this officer is permitted to
occupy the station he does, it cannot be believed that the Citizens of the country will ever
obtain justice in their controversies with the Indians.”197
The agent, Clark was sure, purposefully withheld the fugitives from their rightful
owner, (who he knew, he continued, “to be a poor and destitute widow”) until
compounding expenses would force her to give up the claim, or dispose of it “on their
own terms.” If this officer considered himself “beyond the reach of the orders issued
from the War Department,” he bemoaned, there was no other option than to appeal
directly to Congress. Yet, as Clark appealed, Humphreys was appointed by the president,
196
Humphreys to DuVal, September 23, 1828, ibid.
Archibald Clark to Thomas McKenney, October 20, 1828, LR SEM, r1; Horatio Lowe Deposition,
October 29, 1828, ibid.
197
90
and being “amenable to the orders of the War Office,” there was no reason why this
agent’s flagrant disobedience had not already subjected him to a violation of his duty.
This, Clark hoped, might still happen, and relieve the “good citizens” of the region “of an
officer, who has already brought down upon him the…indignation of all persons who
have had occasion to transact business with him in his official character.”198
In 1829, Clark also wrote the new secretary of war, John Eaton, and forwarded
McKenney numerous correspondence which he hoped might aid in the Department’s
investigation of Humphreys, which was by that time in progress. The other object, Clark
explained, was to again present the subject of his claim, which he asserted “has been for
the past thirty years withheld from its lawful owner.” McKenney returned his request
several months later, noting that an investigation into his particular claim had begun in
the Department, and Clark would be updated when it had been concluded.199 That
enquiry McKenney also sent to Humphreys, postmarked the same day. “I am directed by
the Secretary of War,” McKenney wrote, to enquire into the reasons why the claim of
Mrs. Hannay had not yet been delivered. Were the slaves in Florida, or under the control
of the agent? Furthermore, McKenney asked, were the new terms of bond defined and
accepted?200
Humphreys answered by explaining to the superintendent what he had already
told both Clark and DuVal: that the chiefs regarded the slave Sarah as their property,
“and that they could not consent to surrender it, until the matter should be adjudicated
upon,” and a ruling made adverse to their claim. As with the Cook claim, they in no way
198
Ibid.
Archibald Clark to J.H. Eaton, February 12, 1829, ibid.; McKenney to Archibald Clark, September 24,
1829, LS OIA, r. 6: 96.
200
McKenney to Humphreys, September 24, 1829, ibid.
199
91
refused to surrender the property after such a decision was made—but were determined
against releasing them any sooner. The agent also remarked that the fugitives were in the
country, but not under his control, “denied as he is (by the Department in a letter received
from you some months since) the use of the means requisite, to enable him to effect a
compliance with its orders, upon the subject.” There was a meeting with a delegation of
chiefs schedule the next day, Humphreys concluded; the order for the slaves would be reread, its compliance urged, and their response recorded.201
Humphreys communicated that talk to Lieutenant Governor Westcott in late
February 1830, once again reiterating that there was no way the Indians would surrender
the slave until a trial had been concluded. They would go so far “as to offer resistance by
force and arms,” Humphreys added, although the Indians themselves held a “humiliating
sense of their weakness,” and surely realized how hopeless of a struggle it would quickly
become. Still, he argued, that determination emphasized how resistant they were to
further surrendering slaves in these sorts of cases, “which they evidently think would be
construed in a measure as an abandonment of their claim,” no matter how he attempted to
assure them otherwise.202
“As a means to avoid unpleasant extremities,” Humphreys suggested, why not
extend to the chiefs the ability to bond the property under dispute, a privilege regularly
afforded to the white claimants. “This would afford the white claimant the same kind of
protection proposed to the opponent,” Humphreys argued, “and I have no doubt the
Indians could and would if such alternatives were presented to them, give satisfactory
201
202
Humphreys to McKenney, February 16, 1830, LR SEM, r. 800.
Humphreys to James Westcott, February 23, 1830, ibid.
92
security for the forthcoming of the negroes when requiring legal authority to give
them.”203
203
Ibid. See also: Minutes of Talk held at the Seminole Nation, February 20, 1830, ibid.
93
Chapter Six
Humphreys’ Investigation
Government officials, for the most part, ignored Humphreys by the time he
suggested alternatives to the system in 1829. In fact, some had begun doing so by 1828.
They were, instead, blaming him for the failures of the Agency in increasingly
unambiguous language. In a January 1828 “Report to the Legislative Council Committee
on Indian Affairs,” for instance, a House Indian Affairs committee stated the obvious:
that “much complaint” existed in the country, and because of the reluctance in which
runaways had been surrendered “by the proper authorities to their lawful owners.” On
the one hand, direct evidence of malicious intent was unavailable. Yet, that there was
complaint, “a reference to the numerous letters on file in the war office” could easily
illustrate. As the committee’s report continued, blame became much more directed.
Most importantly, the “probable causes” of these difficulties, could be traced “to interest
and unwarrantable interference” on the part of those connected with the tribes—in short,
agent Humphreys. Removal could not possibly be affected, they concluded, until
different sentiments were “diffused among them.” Humphreys needed to be removed.204
Governor DuVal enthusiastically agreed with the Legislative Council, having
grown disgusted by the agent’s alleged excuses in late 1828. In September, while
responding to his latest rebuff of Archibald Clark in the case of Mary Hannay’s claim,
DuVal finally washed his hands of the man. “I shall state to the Department,” he began,
204
Report of the Legislative Council Committee on Indian Affairs, January 17, 1828, TP 23: 1002-1003.
94
that Humphreys had not “impressed the Indians with the necessity of complying with
orders relating to the delivery of slaves in the nation,” and that if he had done his job, “no
difficulty would have occurred.” As the first officer of the territory, DuVal continued, it
was his duty to see that the orders of the government were “promptly executed,” and with
every effort in his ability—Humphreys had clearly not endeavored to do the same.
Finally, the governor refused any further communication with the agent on the subject of
Indian affairs, at least until he had been counseled by the War Department on the whole
situation.205
That same day, DuVal also forwarded a number of his letters with Humphreys to
McKenney, upbraiding the agent’s conduct.
DuVal had also ordered the chiefs’ annuity
retained in order to enforce the slaves’ surrender, and vowed not to “recede from the
ground” he had taken, until otherwise directed by the secretary of war. “It is well known
that the Agent of any Indian tribe,” he noted, could induce chiefs to sign practically any
paper he wanted, or to enforce any act he recommended. Under that assertion, “I say
without hesitation,” that Humphreys could “have any order carried into effect” that the
Department wished, “even to removal of the whole nation,” yet particularly regarding
runaway slaves. His own personal command of the respect of the chiefs, DuVal
confided, and his “knowledge of their facility,” alone warranted his statements.
Concluding his diatribe, an impartial, professional enquiry had to be initiated into the
conduct of the officer, of which he thoroughly disapproved.206
205
206
DuVal to Humphreys, September 22, 1828, Sprague: 59-60.
DuVal to McKenney, September 22, 1828, LR FLA, r. 287.
95
The governor also forwarded a number of missives supporting his accusations.207
He included seven attachments in all, containing several correspondences he had with the
agent, affidavits from concerned or outraged citizens, and his remarks. One of these
remarks was written on the Humphreys-DuVal correspondence made over an order to
have Hannay’s slaves delivered immediately, written in August 1, 1828. In that order,
pursuant to McKenney’s request, DuVal had directed Humphreys to accept Hannay’s
bond, regardless of the residencies of those she listed as securities. In response,
Humphreys reported two weeks later that he was extremely wary of the bond her lawyers
had presented him. He was hesitant to accept the bond, and have it prove insufficient to
insure Hannay’s continued cooperation. Therefore, Humphreys concluded, he would
delay the order’s execution until he “may be furnished with instructions” for his
government “on the point in question.” Essentially, DuVal argued, Humphreys informed
him that he was, respectfully of course, ignoring his order.208 This, the governor fumed,
was preposterous. “The delay in the execution of this order, for the reasons assigned by
the Agent, is only evidence of his determination to evade the order.”209
DuVal also remarked to McKenney about Humphrey’s letter of August 15, which
also contained a talk he gave to the chiefs over the slaves in Mary Hannay’s claim.
Firstly, DuVal declared, the proceedings of the talk—and the Indians’ argument in it—
sounded more like it was manufactured by Humphreys than it actually reflected “the
concise brevity of the Indians.”210 This talk DuVal forwarded to McKenney, further
remarking that the order to have the slaves delivered was given by the recommendation
207
Ibid.
DuVal to Humphreys, August 1, 1828, ibid.; Humphreys to DuVal, August 14, 1828, ibid.
209
“Remarks” by DuVal to Humphreys to DuVal of August 14, 1828, enclosed in DuVal to McKenney,
September 22, 1828, LR FLA, r. 287.
210
DuVal to McKenney, September 22, 1828, ibid.
208
96
of the Department, with “such information as satisfied the Secretary of its justice.” It was
insulting that the agent would, “more than a year after the time the order should have
been executed,” attempt to not only lecture the Department on its alleged injustice, but
ignore its commands. If the Department and superintendent continued to submit to
having their orders “thus evaded by the agent,” DuVal warned, “and our citizens
consequently deprived of their property,” the outcome would “be worse than useless to
expect insubordination in their Agents.” He had no doubt that if Humphreys had been at
least sufficiently threatened by the Department into doing his duty, “the order would have
been executed long since without difficulty.”211
The third correspondence DuVal forwarded to the superintendent was no less
pejorative. He first copied Humphrey’s September communication notifying the
governor that the chiefs had “positively, but respectfully” declined to have Hannay’s
slaves surrendered. Humphreys also complained of the bond controversy generally,
regretting that the order to have claims adjudicated by Judge Smith was not being
correctly executed. The agent sent these comments by express to the governor, so that
the Department would be “seasonally apprised of the facts” in the case.212
“I have never heard before,” DuVal retorted angrily, “that the Indians had
objected to the delivery of these slaves,” when sufficiently ordered by the Department.
He also doubted the Indians’ ability to comprehend any judicial proceeding, and resented
Humphreys’ avowal that the chiefs would readily abide by Judge Smith’s
recommendation. They would no more “attend to the order of a judge,” he barked, “than
211
Talk with the Indians, August 15, 1828, ibid.; Humphreys to DuVal, August 15, 1828, ibid; “Remarks”
by DuVal to Humphreys to DuVal of August 15, 1828, enclosed DuVal to McKenney, September 22, 1828,
ibid.
212
Humphreys to DuVal, September 23, 1828, ibid.
97
to that of a private individual.” All difficulty in these cases, he concluded, originated
with Humphreys’ injudiciousness. As long as the Department allowed him to continue
evading its orders, he as governor could not discharge his duty “in any other manner than
by respectfully remonstrating.” He also reiterated to McKenney his severing the ties
between his governorship and Humphreys’ agency. Not that it mattered, he rationalized,
as he was convinced his orders would go unexecuted regardless.213
In consideration of his moratorium, DuVal did personally return one more of
Humphreys’ notes—his express letter of September 23—although only because the
original missive declining any further communication had most likely not made it to the
Agency when Humphreys wrote back. A copy of that letter, DuVal informed
Humphreys, along with others and remarks, had been forwarded to the Department for its
consideration. Nothing else would be done, until he had received a response.
Washington must decide on the whole situation, he closed, “and either approve your
conduct—and thus surrender all direction of Indian affairs—or enforce their orders.”214
Six days later, in early October, Humphreys did receive the governor’s mail. And
it was read, according to the stunned agent, “with no little surprise.” Unfortunately,
Humphreys wrote, “I am unable to obtain your approbation of the manner in which I have
discharged my duties,” at least in relation to slave claims. He could not but feel angered,
however, at the governor’s insensitivity—even callousness—on the subject. “You
attribute to me a disregard of duty no wise warranted by any circumstances that have
occurred,” he countered, “and therefore inconsistent with that liberality and justice I have
a right to expect at your hands.” That delays had occurred, Humphreys readily admitted.
213
“Remarks” by DuVal to Humphreys to DuVal, September 23, 1828, enclosed DuVal to McKenney,
September 22, 1828, ibid.
214
DuVal to Humphreys, October 2, 1828, Sprague: 62.
98
They were not any consequence of his lack of effort, however. In an argument the agent
had made to the Department numerous times before, he blamed inaction on the lack of
military power necessary in the confrontations which almost always developed. Had he
been issued that authority, “there would have been far less difficulty in enforcing
obedience to the instructions of the Department.” Furthermore, his facilities were not
sufficient to keep slaves from escaping, and the chiefs had lost the confidence required to
deliver them under the present system of bonds.215
Humphreys also reiterated these complaints directly to the Department,
addressing Secretary of War Peter B. Porter two days after he wrote DuVal, on October
10. There was no other way of communicating to the Department, than directly through
the secretary, Humphreys began by apologizing. Governor DuVal had, after all, declined
all correspondence with him, and thus effectually closed his line of communication
through the Indian Office. Humphreys alluded that DuVal greatly disapproved of his
conduct in relation to slave claims, “and that, on this account, he had determined to report
me as a delinquent.” Of the governor’s actions, Humphreys argued, predicated as they
were on “the ex parte statements of irresponsible and interested persons,” and completely
untrue, “I have a good right to complaint.” DuVal evidently did not fully realize the
difficulties of his position. The agent also forwarded Porter a copy of his August talk
with the chiefs as evidence, which he hoped would illustrate the chiefs’ complete refusal
to surrender slaves. From this talk, Humphreys wrote, it may be easily perceived “their
feelings in regard to the delivery required of them of certain negroes, and how far I am
obnoxious to censure for the failure of the Indians to comply with the orders directing
said delivery.” He, as agent, had pressed every single one of these predicaments on to the
215
Humphreys to DuVal, October 8, 1828, ibid.: 60.
99
governor, and so on through the chain of command. “I have no fear of reproach from
them.”216
The agent then proceeded to attack DuVal’s allegations on a more personal level.
“That I have questioned the policy, and even doubted the justice, of some of the measures
directed in the property controversies between the whites and Indians, I am free to
admit.” Perhaps this was presumptuous, Humphreys concluded; “but if so, it was
honest.” Furthermore, Humphreys warned Porter, DuVal’s dangerous course of action in
continually threatening to withhold annuity payments would soon be considered by the
Indians as an infraction of the treaty, “and serve to impair their confidence in the
kindness and justice of the government.”217
Nevertheless, the cascade of complaints against the agent which began with the
Legislative Council and intensified with Governor DuVal, continued with the
Superintendent and Secretary of War. McKenney wrote Porter in early November 1828,
outlining the accusations which had been lately made against him. “In a general way,”
McKenney began, for two years various complaints of the agent had been made through
Delegate White by “those who felt aggrieved,” and by others who accused him of a “want
of disposition to aid them” in recovering their runaways. From time to time, McKenney
continued, orders were issued by the Department “of the most preemptory character,
perfectly to the satisfaction of the claimants,” which more than addressed the
controversy. Claimants regularly responded, however, that they were unable to secure
their property, as Humphreys “was determined not to assist them.”218
216
Humphreys to Porter, October 10, 1828, ibid.: 60-62.
Ibid.
218
McKenney to Secretary of War, November 1, 1828, TP 24: 94-97.
217
100
One citizen, Zephaniah Kingsley, accused the agent directly of keeping his slaves
at the Agency under a different name, and also to keeping and working Margaret Cooks’
claimed slaves there for more than a year, even after they were positively ordered by the
Department to be delivered. McKenney also cited the Legislative Council report, arguing
its implication of Humphreys’ “illicit traffic of slaves,” although, he admitted, “no proof
accompanies this.” In a third charge, another letter outlined the “vexatious” state of
affairs in the territory in relation to the agent’s conduct. It concluded, McKenney wrote,
that “if the War Department was informed of the dissatisfaction that exists among the
people of the Territory, generally, against Colo. Humphreys, he would be removed
immediately.” This was most likely a letter from Mrs. Cook’s lawyer John Hanson, in
consideration of the controversy over her claim. “It is certainly true,” McKenney added,
“that great dissatisfaction does exist.”219
A fourth charge was contained in a similar letter by Archibald Clark. He accused
Humphreys of “opposing obstacles” to the recovery of their slaves, by repeatedly denying
them his assistance, particularly in rejecting Mary Hannay’s out-of-territory security.
Clark’s letter was a strong one, McKenney added, “and I know no excuse that can be
offered for the agent in the course he took.”220 Yet another re-accused the agent of
speculating in the slaves he was required to deliver. According to the affidavit of a Mr.
William Everett, he bought numerous slaves from chiefs at a reduced rate—the only way,
Humphreys had allegedly assured Everett, that they could be secured for delivery. Yet,
as Everett claimed, he had not seen his slaves since the reported sale, except once or
twice at the Agency, and was convinced that Humphreys, “instead of aiding in their
219
220
Ibid. See also: Mr. Hanson to Col. White, May 7, 1828, LR FLA, r. 287.
Thomas McKenney to Secretary of War, November 1, 1828, TP 24: 94-97.
101
recovery…[raised] obstacles in order to purchase them at reduced prices.” If these
accusations were proved true, McKenney warned, Humphreys obviously had to be
removed. On the other hand, whether he really bought them for himself or not was
irrelevant; he had been refused the ability to buy slaves under any circumstance, and this
order “it appears he has disregarded.” In relatively unrelated charges, McKenney also
included accusations from John Hanson that he improved the Agency land for his own
use, including sugar works, and charged his bills to the government.221
The superintendent also reiterated DuVal’s request that the agent’s actions be
investigated. “He is loudly, and constantly complained against,” he added, “and has been
for two years—the directions of the Department have not been conformed to by him;” on
the questions of difficulty, “his answers, and reasons appear evasive.” Finally, whether
the most egregious allegations were sustained or not, “such is the excitement against the
agent in Florida,” and especially since DuVal “assumed the relation to him which he
has,” that there was very little confidence that he could effectively control the territory at
all, ever. Particularly shameful, his dealing with slaves after positively ordered not to
“indicated a dealing of insubordination which makes it questionable whether orders on
any other subject would be met differently.” If that were the case, certainly the duties of
his agency would be “more acceptably” performed by someone else.222
Secretary Porter read McKenney’s report and forwarded his own conclusions on
to President John Quincy Adams. Porter offered Adams proof the agent’s “having
connived with the Indians in the concealment of runaway slaves,” with the intent, he
emphasized, of purchasing them for himself. In addition, the representations of both
221
222
Ibid.
Ibid.
102
DuVal (who had “declined all official intercourse with him on account of his conduct”)
and Col. White, “go strongly to confirm the charges.” The interests of the government,
Porter declared, required “his speedy removal.” The secretary went so far as to
recommend a replacement, Captain William Beard of Maryland, who, like Humphreys,
was “late of the Army.”223
President Adams chose, instead, to order an investigation. Somewhat in
agreement with that decision, Col. White wrote Porter in December that he had spoken to
Adams, and understood that the President was unwilling to act on accusations “so
seriously affecting the character of an individual,” until Humphreys had a chance to
explain himself. The allegations were, White suggested, liable to the agent’s reputation;
to wait until the agent could present a defense sounded like a reasonable request. Yet, he
pondered almost sarcastically, how far “the want of harmony,” the “serious
embarrassments to the public service,” and the numerous “public complaints on file”
could justify the removal of the agent—that he did not “presume to decide.”224
White proceeded to address the House of Representatives on the subject three
days later, requesting that an independent investigator be assigned. To that position he
recommended Alexander Adair, Esq.—the Marshall of Tallahassee. McKenney wrote
Adair after his appointment was confirmed, forwarding him a number of papers
containing the charges leveled against Humphreys. Adair was to investigate each charge,
hear Humphreys’ defense, and relate everything back to the Department, with his own
opinion added.225 Adair soon accepted the position, and vowed to attend to the
223
Secretary of War to the President, December 6, 1828, LR SEM, r. 800. Contains four enclosures.
White to Porter, December 13, 1828, ibid.
225
White to House of Representatives, December 16, 1828, ibid.; McKenney to Alexander Adair,
December 18, 1828, TP 24: 120-121.
224
103
investigation with as little delay as possible. Yet, it would take a while, as there were
numerous complainants, and their residences were disbursed through a very rural north
Florida. In addition, Adair enquired, were the formalized charges to be restricted to those
written by the Department? Some of the complaints were so vague or “indirectly alluded
to,” Adair confessed, he was confused as to whether he should consider them formal
charges or not—although, he added, “I have reason to believe they would be insisted
upon.”226
Once instigated, it took Adair three months to prosecute his investigation. He
moved from St. Augustine, north to St. Mary’s in Georgia, and then southwest to Fort
King and the Agency in Central Florida. In April, he wrote the Department that he had
finished taking his depositions, yet was not ready to report his conclusions. This
prolonged absence, he apologized, was consequent to both the horrible conditions in
Florida, and his ailing health.227 A little over two weeks later, he forwarded the secretary
of war his full report, containing formal charges, questions, countless depositions and his
own additions. He had also forwarded those papers to Humphreys, in order that the agent
could write his formal defense. At the time Adair returned his investigation to the
Department, Humphreys’ defense had not yet come to hand. It was expected shortly,
Adair noted however, and he would forward it to Washington as soon as possible.228
From the magnitude of the charges and the fanaticism with which they were
preferred, Adair’s report began, “not a doubt was entertained that all needful assistance
would be afforded to facilitate the investigation. What was my surprise to find the
reverse.” Those who were “most clamorous,” in their accusations were the most hesitant
226
Adair to McKenney, January 12, 1829, LR SEM, r. 800.
Adair to McKenney, April 6, 1829, ibid.
228
Adair to the Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, TP 24: 203-206.
227
104
to give any sort of deposition at all, and the testimony that was given by one often
contradicted others.229 The first charge he elucidated in his investigation reflected the
complaints which accused Humphreys of willfully disobeying the orders of the
Department, in having claimed slaves surrendered to their owners—particularly those of
Mrs. Hannay and Mrs. Cook. To that charge, Adair wrote Secretary of War John Eaton,
the three depositions he took did not sustain the charge. “They show no want of respect
for the orders of the Department,” he added, “or zeal in the discharge of duty.” Among
the depositions he included evincing that conclusion was of a Daniel Meickler, which
accounted the controversy over Mary Hannay’s claim.230
Meickler recalled that Humphreys had originally rejected Hannay’s bond in
consequence of its being non-local, but after consultation with others in his general
vicinity, soon accepted it. Humphreys then directed Meickler, with a small complement
of soldiers and an interpreter, into the nation to retrieve the slave. That party met an
alarming resistance, however, and returned without success. According to the deposition,
Humphreys then confronted the chiefs angrily and demanded the slave, threatening the
use of a stronger military force—threats the chiefs heatedly returned. The agent then resent a considerably larger squad into the nation, containing a lieutenant and ten soldiers,
and directed them to scour the area for the fugitive. Again, however, their force returned
empty handed. Meickler also recollected that about that time, he became informed by a
letter that Humphreys, who was then in Tallahassee, had come upon information which
brought Hannay’s bond into serious suspect. Only under that information, and in genuine
229
Ibid.
Ibid.; Adair to Humphreys, n.d., enclosed in Adair to Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, ibid.: 207;
Affidavit of Daniel Mickler, February 24, 1829, in Adair to Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, LR SEM, r.
800.
230
105
regard for the well-being of the Indians, did Humphreys then alert Hannay’s attorney,
Archibald Clark, that security within the territory would be necessary.231 So far from
deserving censure, Meickler’s deposition seemed to prove Humphreys’ dedication to
executing his authority with power, yet respect—whether that meant denying seizure of
slaves or enforcing it.
In the controversy over Cook’s slave John, who Humphreys was also unable to
secure, a deposition by Francis Richards Junior again seemed to exonerate his actions.
Humphreys personally apprehended the claimed fugitive at Tampa Bay (a dangerous
region including the most militant blacks and Indians), returned him to Fort King, and
secured him to the Agency house with a chain until his delivery could be made. In that
time, however, the slave forced the chain from his neck and escaped. Humphreys again
personally pursued the fugitive back south for ten days, returning successfully and
proceeded directly to the blacksmith, where he had the slave shackled in custom made
handcuffs and ankle chains, directly to the Agency foundation. Yet again, with the help
of an Indian Negro, John escaped. “The deponent has reason to believe,” Richards
concluded, “and does verily believe that the Agent made use of his best exertions, to have
the said Negro so secured, as that he might be delivered to his owner.”232
Adair narrowed the next grouping of complaints into a second general charge: that
Humphreys failed to give necessary assistance to citizens in enabling them to recover
their property. And he did so, the complaint continued, in order that he may affect the
231
Adair to the Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, TP 24: 203-206; Adair to Humphreys, n.d., enclosed in
Adair to Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, ibid.: 207; Affidavit of Daniel Mickler, February 24, 1829, in
Adair to Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, LR SEM, r. 800. See also, “Interrogatories to be propounded to
Horatio Lowe,” and “Answers of Horatio Lowe,” February 24, 1829, ibid.
232
“Deposition of Francis Richards Junior, 3/6/1829,” enclosed in Adair to Secretary of War, April 24,
1829, LR SEM, r. 800. See also, Affidavit of John M. Hanson, February 14, 1829, ibid.
106
purchase of the same slaves at discounted rates for his own use. That charge, Adair
declared, was “no better sustained.” The deposition of Waters Smith was the only one
taken, and was simply wrong. Smith, Adair noted, while being a seemingly upstanding
citizen, must not have been aware that the slaves he claimed were being withheld had
already been delivered. The depositions of others had proven it. In addition, there was a
positive refusal in the instance of Zephaniah Kingsley’s accusation to even recognize his
earlier statements. Kingsley had settled his affair with the agent and wanted nothing to
do with the investigation. Evidence gathered in support of these statements included
depositions by three army regulars stationed at Fort King: a surgeon, Lieutenant, and
Captain.233
Also included in the charge were William Everett’s allegations, contained in a
copy of his original complaint to Governor DuVal, dated September 1828. Everett
protested to DuVal of Humphreys’ continued refusal to deliver his slaves, while seeking,
Everett argued, to purchase them outright for his own benefit. These accusations, Adair
countered, were “predicated upon a Volunture[sic], Exparty[sic], affidavit of Wm
Everett—strong & explicit.” From what the investigator collected concerning the man’s
character, “any statement coming from him should be read with caution.” The brief
statement made by a Mr. John Buck, whom Everett mentioned in his original accusation,
according to Adair, contradicted his whole statement. Buck declined any meaningful
233
Adair to Humphreys, n.d., enclosed in Adair to Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, TP 24: 207; Alexander
Adair to the Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, ibid.: 203-206; Waters Smith Deposition Questions, n.d.,
enclosed in Adair to Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, LR SEM, r. 800; Waters Smith Deposition Answers,
February 19, 1829, ibid.; Letter by Capt Glassell, March 4, 1829, ibid.; Deposition of Francis D. Newcomb
at Fort King, March 9, 1829, ibid.; Deposition of H. S. Hawking at Fort King, March 9, 1828, ibid.
107
deposition, “out of delicacy to Everett.” “I have little confidence,” Adair stated, “in the
statement of either of them.”234
The last two charges were relatively unrelated to the slave controversies. The
third dealt with accusations that Humphreys had contracted work to be done on the
Agency for his own benefit, and inappropriately billed the government. While
depositions taken by a Mr. Nickolay Morgan, one of the contractors, seemed to prove that
the agent had not intended to defraud the government, still the investigator added, “let
this be admitted and yet the least that can be said.” It was certainly an unprofessional
way to conduct his business, according to Adair: “it would have been but little trouble for
the Agent to have kept a regular account of the labour & materials supplied by him,” so
that the government would have known exactly what they were paying for.235
The fourth and last charge accused Humphreys of willfully allowing the Indians
to roam outside their boundary, where they were accused of constantly attacking the
surrounding settlers. This charge, Adair noted, was obvious from his own observations,
and yet “was admitted by the Agent.” Humphreys, Adair stated, categorically denied
having any sort of power to control them in that respect. “Not knowing how far his
authority extends,” he continued, “or what power he has, I can only state that the evil
exists to a very great extent.”236 It seems, ironically, that these last two charges were the
234
Adair to the Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, TP 24: 203-206; William Everitt to DuVal, September
20, 1828, enclosed in Adair to Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, LR SEM, r. 800; Affidavit of William
Everitt, In Everitt to DuVal, September 20, 1828, ibid.; J. Buck to Alexander Adair, March 5, 1829, ibid.
235
Adair to Gad Humphreys, n.d., enclosed in Adair to Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, TP 24: 207; Adair
to the Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, ibid.: 203-206; Deposition of Nickolay Morgan, February 26,
1829, in Adair to Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, LR SEM, r. 800; Cross interrogatories by Col
Humphreys, n.d., ibid.
236
Adair to Gad Humphreys, n.d., enclosed in Adair to Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, TP 24: 207;
Alexander Adair to the Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, ibid.: 203-206; Deposition of S. Streeter,
February 19, 1829, in Adair to Secretary of War, April 24, 1829, LR SEM, r. 800; Deposition of Jos. B.
Lancaster, March 31, 1829, ibid.; Deposition of H. S. Hawking at Fort King, March 9, 1828, ibid.
108
only ones that might actually have contained evidence of impropriety on behalf of the
Humphreys’ actions. Yet they were unrelated to the root issue—slave claims—and it
appears they were only preferred in an attempt to add more depth to the general
accusations. They were passed over briefly by the investigator, and ignored almost
completely by Humphreys.
Adair forwarded Humphreys’ written defense of the accusations a week later,
which had until that time been delayed. While nothing in the agent’s defense required a
change in his report, the investigator noted, Humphreys certainly did have a lot to say.
He first took exception with Adair, actually, noting “with dissatisfaction…the ex party
manner of conducting the enquiry and the want of [precision] of charges” presented to
him. Adair defended the way he designed the investigation, however, noting to
McKenney the orders he received recommending he proceed taking testimony, as well as
his directions to reorder the accusations into general charges.237
A formal written defense, Humphreys soon began, was not even necessary,
considering the proceedings of the investigation and Adair’s own conclusions. It seemed,
at least to the agent, “poorly complimentary to the good sense of the President, and any
thing respectful to him, to suppose, that a studied argument is necessary, to convince him,
of the entire groundlessness of the accusations.” They were, he spat, the “offspring of
malevolence and cupidity; for I may safely assert, and without the fear of well grounded
contradiction.” There was not in the whole report, he added, one single piece of
testimony “as would be admissible in a court of law, which goes to sustain even a single
charge, enumerated in the catalogue of my alleged enormities.” For not finding the initial
necessity of a full defense, as he had earlier suggested, Humphreys enumerated his
237
Adair to the Secretary of War, May 4, 1829, TP 24: 210-211.
109
complaints in a good degree of detail, assailing the investigation’s depositions one-byone and with determination. Everett’s accusations were “wholly destroyed” by its
opposing testimony, he began, being in substance “positively and unqualifiedly
contradicted” by John Buck. Buck’s statements, he argued, while no not made under
oath, were “equally valid in law”—and “decidedly more to be respected”—when
considering the ex parte statement of Everett, which it effectually canceled. As gross as
Everett’s statement was, it did not surprise him: “When I consider his character…I only
wonder that his pliancy of conscience was not further used against me.”238
Waters Smith’s deposition was no more accurate, Humphreys continued. The
elevated standing of the man, and the “high respect heretofore entertained” by the agent,
made the task of completely gainsaying his statements a much more difficult one. By
Adair’s own investigation, however, three depositions had been taken into the accuracy
of his accusations: from Captain Glassell, Lieutenant Newcomb, and Assistant Surgeon
Hawkins—all army regulars posted at Fort King. All three of those depositions,
Humphreys added, directly contradicted Smith’s statement that the slave Sally had not
been delivered over to her proper owners. Smith alleged that Sally was still in the nation
at the time his deposition had been taken, in February of 1829. Yet, by the depositions of
the officers at Fort King, delivery had been made in November or December of 1828—at
least three or four months earlier—a difference he emphasized. How under such
circumstances, Humphreys concluded, it was possible for Smith to deny the delivery, “I
am utterly at a loss to imagine.” With the witnesses, he snapped, “I have now done!” 239
238
Humphreys to Adair, April 27, 1829, ibid.: 212-214.
Adair to the Secretary of War, May 4, 1829, ibid.: 210-211; Humphreys to Adair, April 27, 1829, ibid.:
212-214.
239
110
Still, the agent spared no criticism in his assessment of the Department’s role.
The ex parte, “and of course illegal” manner by which the investigation had been
conducted, by special instruction from the Department, disgusted him. It left him no
doubt, “from the character this stamped upon the investigation, in its outset,” that had not
been designed to “promote the ends and further the sacred cause of justice,” but to be
used as an engine “to be wielded for the unhallowed purpose of gratifying personal
dislike and advancing selfish views.” Having said this much, he concluded, “I shall here
leave the case to rest upon its own merits, sustained by my own consciousness of
rectitude of purpose in the discharge of my public duties, and relying confidently for an
entire acquittal upon the justice of my Government.” 240
240
Humphreys to Adair, April 27, 1829, ibid.: 212-214.
111
Chapter Seven
Humphreys’ Removal
DuVal, however, who seemed to almost personally hate Humphreys by this point,
had long since resolved not to let the case rest “upon its own merits.” In April 1829,
three days before Adair had concluded and forwarded the results of his investigation to
Washington, DuVal wrote President Jackson directly in the first of many blistering
complaints to Washington. Both Humphreys—who “ought long since to have been
removed for misconduct”—and Judge Smith—“a man who was dismissed with disgrace
from our army, as too vile to hold any command”—had been thought “pure enough” by
the preceding administrations to gain commissions in the territory. Remove these men,
DuVal practically begged Jackson, “and aid us in giving a character to our Territory it
richly deserves.” He appealed to Old Hickory as the father of the territory, and as a
patriot who “not one man in fifty” did not revere. Yet nearly two-thirds of all the
appointments made by his predecessors “were in direct opposition to the wishes of the
people.” The governor held no “vindictive feelings,” he assured the general. Yet the
honor, interest, character, and future prosperity of the territory all hinged on the changes
that had to be made.241
Next, DuVal began what would turn out to be a year long barrage of
correspondence to the Department, writing Secretary of War John Eaton the same day
Adair forwarded Humphreys’ written defense. He had previously communicated to the
241
DuVal to the President, April 21, 1829, ibid.: 197-198.
112
president, DuVal wrote, pressing him to remove Humphreys and have him superceded by
subagent John Phagan. The conduct of the agent was such “that I felt it my duty to bring
him before the War Department,” yet nothing satisfactory had been decided. DuVal was
certain much of that had to do with Humphreys, who he accused of inducing the
witnesses to withhold their testimony. He had no doubt that Humphreys was continually
purchasing slaves, had made “a sugar plantation at the agency,” and that he had gone as
far as purchasing the land that the Agency was built on. Most importantly, however, “I
have never for the last two years been able to execute any of the orders issued by the War
Department,” except those with which the agent personally agreed. The Department
looked to him as governor, he argued, and to have its orders enforced, which he had for
some time “in vain attempted.” As superintendent, DuVal had no confidence in
Humphreys as agent, and vociferously urged his removal.242
Humphreys soon learned of DuVal’s post to the Department, and wrote Eaton just
over two weeks later. It had come to his attention, that since the failure “of the
prosecution of the investigation recently had in relation to my official acts as agent for
the Florida Indians,” DuVal had continued to petition for his removal. This was done, the
agent protested, “in a manner less consistent with correct feeling [, than] to do me that
injury with the [Goverment] which he failed of in the attack.” He begged the Department
not to listen. Instead, he was leaving immediately for Washington, and hoped the
secretary of war would await his arrival and discuss the situation personally.243 Captain
Glassell, still the commanding officer at Fort King, also wrote Eaton on his behalf.
Reiterating that Humphreys had left, and was en route for the purpose of consulting with
242
243
DuVal to the Secretary of War, May 4, 1829, ibid.: 209-210.
Humphreys to Eaton, May 21, 1829, LR SEM, r. 800.
113
the Department over the charges, Glassell gave the secretary his views on the situation. It
was his firm belief, that could the Department delay its final decision until Humphreys
arrived, “a different complexion would most probably be placed upon the case.”244
DuVal, however, also kept up his brisk writing, and said everything he could to
portray Humphreys as negatively as possible. In a letter ostensibly illustrating his lack of
compensation, the Governor again blamed Humphreys. Since his residence was
transferred to the Agency, DuVal bemoaned, the agent had “totally disregarded every
order or direction given him,” and that rather than assisting him as superintendent, he had
thrown countless difficulties in the way. As a result, not only was DuVal responsible for
executing the normal duties of a territorial governorship, but also had to compensate for
the total “neglect and absence of the Agent.” He was practically working both jobs, he
argued, and deserved recompense.245
Again, the next day, the governor complained. In another letter over money,
DuVal expressed his unhappiness with the agent. Normally, territorial governors were
given complete power over Indian affairs as superintendents, he began. In his case,
however, many of those powers had been taken from him and compensation withheld.
“Whether the interests of our citizens will be promoted, by keeping the Superintendent in
ignorance of the subject, you can determine.” In the case of property controversies—
specifically slave property—DuVal felt slighted by the loss of his control over the claims.
Those powers had been delegated to Humphreys, originally, and then to Judge Smith. It
was to the governor that the citizens looked foremost for the delivery of their property.
244
245
Captain Glassell to Eaton, May 22, 1829, ibid.
DuVal to Eaton, June 8, 1829, LR FLA, r. 287.
114
Taking yet another jab at Humphreys, he added that the Indians confided in him as well,
“when not mislead by those whose duty it is to advise them honestly.”246
He also enclosed further charges against Humphreys, levied by himself and
allegedly supported by the statements of subagent Owen Marsh. DuVal had written to
Marsh a week previous, asking the subagent to recall whether Humphreys had withheld
annuity, cattle, or slaves from the Indians. “The interests of the country call for an
explanation of the conduct of the agent,” he pressed Marsh. He had been “severely
censured” by numerous citizens who had slaves held by the Indians, because they
believed he as governor had not sufficiently compelled Humphreys to have them
delivered. Assuring himself that Humphreys was totally at fault, he noted to Owen that
“so far as my authority and power could extend, everything I could do, was done.” If
Humphreys had done anything wrong, and Marsh knew about it, he had inform DuVal,
and the same had be reported to the Department.247
That the agent was actively trading with the Indians, DuVal concluded to Eaton a
week later (seeming to find the evidence he needed in Marsh’s response), “I have no
doubt; and that he claims, and has on his plantation at the agency, slaves belonging to the
Indians, which he has no right to hold, I am convinced.” In addition, Humphreys also
had cattle on the Agency property, which had supposedly been purchased and paid for by
the Indians. If the government overlooked the agent’s obvious and continued violation of
Congressional intercourse laws, DuVal asserted, which prohibited any employee of the
246
DuVal to Eaton, June 9, 1829, ibid.
Ibid.; DuVal to Owen Marsh, May 29, 1829, enclosed in DuVal to Eaton, June 9, 1829, TP 24: 231-232;
Owen Marsh to DuVal, May 29, 1829, ibid.
247
115
Indian Office from trading with the Indians, “that moment consigns these unfortunate
people to certain destruction.”248
Again, not only should the agent be dismissed, but also more of the governor’s
original powers should be reinstituted—particularly power over slave claims. The easiest
way to mitigate such complaints was not through the judicial system—a process in
which, as he had already confided to McKenney, he had no faith. Rather, with power
properly articulated through the superintendency—in assembling the chiefs at the Agency
together with the claimants, and having a fair investigation “of the claims on both sides”
conducted—controversies over runaways would practically disappear. He had done this
once, DuVal reminded Eaton, in 1826, and “in a very short time, many slaves were given
up with the unanimous consent of the Chiefs, and all parties were perfectly satisfied.”249
One particular slaveholder, Davis Floyd, echoed that sentiment to Eaton in a
seemingly independent correspondence. Interested in “one or two claims” to slaves in the
nation, Floyd also questioned Eaton on why the duties of the superintendent in such
controversies had been taken away and given to Judge Smith. “It is quite immaterial to
me who decides upon those cases,” he wrote. Yet, it was previously thought that
questions regarding slaves were “regularly to be decided in the first instance by the
Superintendent,” and then reported to the War Department; Floyd wondered why this had
been altered. After all, he had heard that at one time, DuVal had performed that service
with several chiefs, “and in a few days delivered over a great many slaves to their proper
248
249
DuVal to Eaton, June 9 ,1829, LR FLA, r. 287.
Ibid.
116
owners.” Since his responsibilities had been redirected, however, “not a single case has
been finally decided.”250
DuVal personally took up the question again with a fourth letter to Eaton,
addressed in June 1829. The continued applications “I daily receive from Georgia and
Florida on the subject of slaves” were occupying the majority of his time and attention as
governor; again, he complained, he was under-compensated. The “unprofitable and
laborious duties of Superintendent” were enjoined upon him by the late administration,
he argued, while those usually performed by territorial governors—and for which
compensation was allowed—were taken from him and given to Judge Smith. If the
Judge was not being paid for this service, then it certainly was appropriate of the
Department to avoid the expense. But he was getting paid. As an attorney for the
government in slave controversies, DuVal countered, appointed to that position by the
late administration, “I should consider his power of attorney as having legally expired.”
Now, DuVal requested, let him again perform his own duties, “unless it shall appear that
I am unable to do so.” As superintendent, he should be allowed to investigate and decide
on all disputes of property between citizens and Indians, and “where it is evident that the
property belongs to a white person,” it should be delivered to them “by my order.”251
Slave controversies, he reiterated, were the most numerous and pressing issue
present in the territory. “This single subject,” he argued, “has imposed more labor and
difficulty on me, than any other Superintendent has encountered in the discharge of all
other duties.” There were now at the Agency, he added, five men currently claiming
slaves in the nation. That the agent was absent and in Washington did not help, yet it did
250
251
Davis Floyd to Eaton, June 10, 1829, LR SEM, r. 800.
DuVal to Eaton, June 18, 1829, LR FLA, r. 287.
117
not surprise him. “This, he has done so before, and business which he ought to attend to
must await his return.” Even when he was not absent, DuVal noted, Humphreys had not
discharged his duties any more thoroughly. Again he sniped: perhaps that was for the
best—maybe “he had better be absent altogether.”252
While the Governor withheld his venom on the subject for another seven months,
other notable citizens continued. One particularly harsh comment came from James
Gadsden. A commissioner for the Indian Office, Florida planter, and Jackson protégé,
the Colonel soon joined in the chorus of those denouncing the agent in late 1829. Eyeing
the Seminoles’ emigration west, Gadsden wrote President Jackson and explained that
power had to be projected through the Florida Agency. That was not possible in its
present condition. In fact, the whole region was in turmoil. The garrison at Fort King
had been removed, and the territory was recoiling from the loss of its troops. The
Agency was of little help, it being “confided to a young man not in any way qualified for
the office.” Humphreys was, in the commissioner’s opinion, “not qualified for the
station.” He had little knowledge of the Indian character, and was the “principle source
of most of the difficulties which have occurred with the Indians” in the region.253
Again promising to clean up the mess left in Humphreys’ wake, DuVal next wrote
Eaton in January of 1830, whining afresh of his position, lack of compensation, and of
the agent generally. Through late 1827, he reminded the Department, he had enjoyed the
authority to decide on slave claims, and to forcibly return them if necessary. In that time,
he had decided over one hundred cases “to the entire satisfaction of our citizens and
Indians,” and personally overseen some seventy slaves being delivered over to their
252
253
Ibid.
James Gadsden to Jackson, November 14, 1829, LR SEM, r. 806: Emigration.
118
proper owners. He again petitioned to have such responsibility restored, and adequate
compensation included, as it was an expensive and time-consuming task. Judge Smith
received such compensation; DuVal asserted that he could execute the position better,
and already deserved the extra funds.254
Finally, in March 1830, DuVal succeeded in having Humphreys removed.
McKenney wrote him notifying that President Jackson had, “by and with the advice of
the Senate,” appointed John Phagan to supercede Humphreys as agent. DuVal was to
inform Humphreys that his Agency will have been considered terminated when he
received the letter conveying it.255 As John Mahon had suggested, where Adair’s
investigation did not do much to prove the culpability of Humphreys in most of his
alleged improprieties, DuVal’s correspondences to Eaton, on the other hand, did much
more. A fundamental shift had taken place in the United States by that time: Andrew
Jackson had become President. DuVal beseeched Florida’s old conqueror to relieve the
territory of an official who clearly did not embrace the same egalitarianism the emerging
Democracy championed. With Joseph White and James Gadsden joining DuVal in a sort
of chorus censuring the agent, the criticism of Humphreys evidently reached the intensity
necessary to pressure Jackson into action.256 The Seminoles lost a dear friend when agent
Humphreys was removed. He was a man, Charles Coe concluded, of “sterling qualities
of head and heart.”257
254
DuVal to Eaton, January 28, 1830, LR FLA, r. 287.
McKenney to DuVal, March 18, 1830, TP 24: 381. For information on Phagan’s commission, see
Senate Executive Journal, vol. 4: 68, 72; Phagan to Eaton, May 10, 1830, LR SEM, r. 800; McKenney to
DuVal, May 27, 1830, LS OIA, r. 6: 433; McKenney to DuVal, June 10, 1830, ibid.: 472.
256
Mahon, 70-71.
257
Coe, 46; Mahon, 71; Peters, 86; Sprague, 70-71.
255
119
Yet, even Humphreys’ removal appeared not to cool DuVal’s almost consuming
sense of indignation. In his sixth letter to the Department concerning the situation, he reaccused Humphreys of purchasing slaves and cattle inappropriately from the Indians.
This time, DuVal asserted, the Seminoles were directly complaining—certainly a new
development if the allegations turned out to be true. As for the slaves at least, chiefs
reported to Phagan that the late agent continually approached them and traded for their
slaves. In most circumstances, DuVal emphasized, he plainly defrauded them, refusing
even to pay them the reduced prices he originally offered. Property so illegally obtained
should be seized by the government, the governor asserted, and held until a proper
investigation had been concluded. Yet again, he added to his list of gripes the necessity
of regaining the authority over general slave controversies he felt had been unfairly taken
from him. “I have never known why this business was transferred from me to the judge,”
he protested, “since any order he may make would not be submitted to by the Indians and
force would be required to effect.” An order from him, on the other hand, as
Superintendent would be executed immediately and effectually.258
The War Department finally responded to DuVal’s repeated requests in April
1830, when McKenney granted the governor the authority he so desperately demanded.
The Superintendent confided to him that Judge Smith was given the authority he was
“with no other view than to give satisfaction to the claimants who had remonstrated so
long, and so loud, against the agent.” If he was confident he could handle the cases,
McKenney assured DuVal, then the Department had no problem returning that power
into the hands of the governorship. Secretary Eaton had already ordered Judge Smith to
forward everything relative to the cases to the Governor; and the matter was now, the
258
DuVal to Eaton, April 7, 1830, LR FLA, r. 287.
120
Department concluded, in “your authority to act upon, and report…to the Department of
War for any further direction which they may require.”259
Washington also addressed Humphreys’ continued presence in the region and his
alleged purchases of Indian property. Any investigation DuVal might see fit in the cases
where Indians disputed any transfer of cattle, slaves, etc., to the late agent was thereby
authorized. In addition, Humphreys had lately been appointed to the Office of Post
Master at the Agency, the Secretary informed DuVal, which he held “as a pretext for
remaining in the Indian boundary.” The appointment was given to him out of courtesy,
however, and apparently, he abused it. Eaton vowed to contact the Post Master General
about the improprieties, who would “doubtless promptly apply the proper remedy”—
presumably have him stripped of his position. Then, DuVal was assured, “there will be
nothing in your way to prevent [his] interference, (by the enforcement of the law if
necessary,) with the Indians in the future.”260
Ironically, the War Department also issued the Florida Agency the military
assistance Humphreys had campaigned so urgently for throughout his tenure. Agreeable
to DuVal’s request, the commanding officer of Fort King was, under direction of the
Secretary of War, ordered “to give the Indian agent on his written application, such aid as
may be necessary to enable him to execute the duties required of him.” Considering the
ease at which Washington obliged the governor in this request, the Department’s actions
are hard to explain. Perhaps the newest Secretary finally recognized the need. Perhaps,
259
260
McKenney to DuVal, April 8, 1830, LS OIA, r. 6: 378.
Ibid.; Acting Secretary of War to DuVal, August 14, 1830, TP 24: 439.
121
on the other hand, directives were deliberately withheld late in Humphreys’ tenure—at
least until the late agent had been successfully removed.261
Regardless of the intentions of the Department, with Humphreys out of the
picture, a renewed sense of power, and an Indian agent under his complete control,
DuVal set out to clean up the messes he surely felt Humphreys left behild. In September,
he instructed Phagan to deliver a talk to the Indians, in which they would be notified that
their annuity was again to be withheld, at least until they delivered the slaves claimed by
Mary Hannay to her or her agent. The Governor doubtless hoped Phagan would prove to
be a much more effectual tool of the Department’s policy. His first test—these orders,
the governor reminded him—had “constantly been evaded” by his predecessor.
Additionally, Phagan was also to investigate Humphreys’ possession of certain slaves
supposedly belonging to the Indian Nelly Factor, and report back to him as soon as
possible. 262
Taking the course of slave claim arbitration back practically to its 1822 roots,
DuVal then elucidated the procedure which would henceforth be used in deciding the
controversies. In all cases, Phagan was to be the principle investigator. Where a citizen
claimed slaves in the nation, it was relatively undisputed by the Indians, and the agent
found sufficient proof that the slaves had indeed absconded, he was then ordered to exert
all his power “and authority to have them delivered up to the owner.” Where both a
citizen and Indian claimed the same slaves, on the other hand, a counsel of chiefs would
261
262
Ibid.
DuVal to Phagan, October 9, 1830, LR SEM, r. 800.
122
be assembled, evidence submitted to them, and their answers reported back to DuVal,
who would then decide.263
The message conveying this system—and a few words over Hannay’s claim,
which “will not be pleasant” to the ears of the Seminoles—was delivered to a delegation
of chiefs and warriors two days later in the stern language of the new policy. “Your
annuity will not be paid,” the chiefs were plainly notified, “until you comply with the
treaty, in giving up runaways from labour who are in your nation. The Agent will report
to me what you determine on, and I will make known the same to your Great Father.”264
The orders of the Department, DuVal forwarded along to Secretary Eaton one week after
the talk, “have been repeatedly evaded by the chiefs and especially the order to deliver up
slaves claimed by Mrs. Hannay.” He was absolutely determined to have those orders
executed, and to that end, he had once again resorted to withholding the Indians’ annuity.
This tactic had been previously turned to, DuVal reminded Eaton, but had been rejected
by the previous administration. With Jackson in the presidency, however, the governor
doubtless considered the threat a very realistic course of action. Should it not meet the
views of the Department, however, “it is desirable that such directions may be given in
relation to this subject.”265
As Humphreys was removed from the picture, he had applied for and been turned
down for indemnification involving the land and improvements he had invested in the
Agency. Still, however, he remained in the region. He soon built a trading post just
outside the nation, and became an outspoken opponent of emigration.266 Phagan
263
Ibid.
A talk, Chiefs and Warriors of the Seminole Nation, October 11, 1830, ibid.
265
DuVal to Eaton, October 18, 1830, ibid.
266
See Editor’s notes, TP 24: 381.
264
123
approached him over the disputed slaves allegedly under his control, arguing that they
belonged to Davis Floyd (who earlier wrote the Secretary of War in DuVal’s defense)
and John Garry, demanding them of the late agent. Humphreys, however, positively
refused to release them, with the threat “that I might take them on my own responsibility”
Phagan reported, which he declined. The two claimants then also declined insisting on
the execution of the order through the Department, illustrating yet another seemingly
fraudulent claim Humphreys intransigently refused to placate.267
Later in 1832, both Phagan and DuVal accused him of attempting to persuade the
Indians not to travel west. “I am convinced,” DuVal wrote on the subject, that
Humphreys and another man, W. George Centre, endeavored to “prejudice them against
removing west of the Mississippi.” DuVal had to act fast, he concluded, and travel down
to the Agency from Tallahassee to “counteract any impressions these men have made on
the minds of the Indians unfavorable to the views of the Government.”268 The two had
not only attempted to persuade the Indians, but moved to indict Phagan on a number of
charges as well. The most interesting charges included his “unjust, oppressively, and
arrogantly” withholding of the Indians’ annuity, and his insistence on having certain
slaves surrendered for delivery to Davis Floyd and John Garry—the same slaves Phagan
had unsuccessfully demanded of Humphreys months earlier. Phagan complained of these
charges to the secretary of war directly in July, noting that he was forced to defend
himself not only to promote the removal of the Indians west, but to “defeat those
267
Charge 7, Specification 1, enclosed in Phagan to Cass, February 6, 1832, LR SEM, r. 800.
Phagan to Cass, July 13, 1832, LR SEM, r. 800; DuVal to Secretary of War, August 21, 1832, TP 24:
725-726.
268
124
scoundrels that are trying to operate not only against the views of the government, but
also against me.”269
Yet, under the pressing of Delegate Joseph White, the government investigated
Phagan on those and a catalogue of other charges. DuVal again came to the agent’s aid,
however, assuring the Department in the ensuing enquiry that he had ordered Phagan to
pursue the courses he did. He first reminded Eaton that he had forwarded his orders to
the agent, along with his general course of action in withholding the annuity, to the
Department for its review. Upon hearing back that Washington did not believe it had the
ability to authorize the withholding of annuity in such cases (again), he ordered the
Indians be paid. If there was any impropriety in this course, DuVal assured the secretary,
“the responsibility rests on me and not the agent who acted in obedience to my order.”270
Phagan was also accused of threatening the Indians with “chastisement in the case
of their disobedience” of the order to deliver a large number of slaves demanded by
Davis Floyd and John Garry, which Humphreys had personally refused to deliver.
According to DuVal’s own report, a number of councils with the chiefs, which occurred
while Humphreys was agent, had determined that the slaves indeed belonged to an Indian
woman named Nelly Factor. Nelly had allegedly sold that ownership to Floyd and
others, who then ordered them surrendered into their custody. Humphreys, although no
longer an agent, argued that the slaves never really belonged to Factor, but to another
Indian woman named Ann Burgess. Burgess had never sold her right to the slaves; the
sale made by Factor, therefore, was a forgery and illegal. Sensing their inevitable loss,
Humphreys then claimed himself an interested party in the slaves, by right of sale from
269
Phagan to Cass, July 13, 1832, LR SEM, r. 800; Charges and specifications preferred by George Center,
January 23, 1832, ibid.
270
Explanation of charges preferred by Mr. Center on John Phagan, February 7, 1832, ibid.
125
Burgess. This action seems less consistent with Humphreys’ actual desire to acquire the
slaves, and was most likely designed to shield the Indian party from the real threat of a
fraudulent claim, placed under the control of an Agency which no longer considered their
well being. For whatever purpose, Humphreys disputed the right of agent Phagan to
seize them under this pretense, and Floyd’s party declined any further action in having
them seized.271
There were several other charges made against agent Phagan which were pressed
by Delegate White, Acting Governor Westcott, and ultimately Secretary of War Lewis
Cass.272 While scholar Virginia Bergman Peters stated relatively bluntly that as the agent
who replaced Humphreys, Phagan was a “rank opportunist,” Mahon seems more subtle in
remarking that if the Indians gained an ally with Phagan, “they certainly did not get a
more honest man.”273 Of all the charges levied against him, the ones accusing him of
financial misconduct ultimately had him removed in 1832. A later investigation proved
not only that he was underpaying interpreters and other workers at the Agency, but that
he misappropriated annuity payments and embezzled money from the Office—ironically,
one of the same accusations he and DuVal pressed on Humphreys shortly after he was
removed.274
271
Charges and specifications preferred by George Center, January 23, 1832, ibid.; Explanation of charges
preferred by Mr. Center on John Phagan, February 7, 1832, ibid.
272
For examples of these charges, see: White to President, January 19, 1832; White to Cass, January 23,
1832; Westcott to Phagan, February 4, 1832; Phagan to Cass, February 6, 1832, and February 7, 1832, ibid.
273
Peters, 86; Mahon, 71.
274
Peters, 86; Foreman, 322. For direct evidence of this misconduct, see Westcott to Herring, November
15, 1833, ASPMA 6: 490-491.
126
Conclusion
Beginning in 1822, the Agency was almost continually engaged in a struggle to
assist in the development of the Florida frontier. Possibly, more than with any other
region of the south, its richly fertile fields came with tremendous difficulty to planteremigrants. The territory’s earliest legislators had struggled to enact a code which
disenfranchised the blacks legitimately freed under Spanish rule, and sought to have their
plantations guarded from runaways or uprisings with the most preemptory of measures.
To achieve that security, planters sought to have black settlements destroyed, and
Seminole communities isolated. Most importantly, they sought to have runaways seized
and returned. These measures had all been frustrated by Humphreys—an agent who did
not weigh those priorities as heavily as protecting the sovereignty of the Seminoles under
his charge. By the election of Andrew Jackson and the Democracy in 1828, however, the
regions’ settlers had finally received the support they needed; Humphreys, who clearly
did not share its views, was replaced.
In the wake of Phagan’s removal, Wiley Thompson was tapped for the Agency
position in 1833. With his appointment as the third agent in ten years, and with the
assumption of his duties in December, the backwards slide of the Florida Agency seemed
finally to have begun reversing. A Georgia native, militia commander and general, and
longtime Congressman, Thompson was a highly respected leader, and was doubtless
valued by Washington. The Indians revered him as well, acting Governor Westcott
127
confided, “and much advantage is anticipated from his appointment.”275 With his
commission, however, the most ironic conclusion can now be made to the tenure of Gad
Humphreys. It comes with the development of the Agency moving through the Treaty of
Payne’s landing in 1832, and the run-up to war in the early 1830s. The controversies
which had Humphreys removed did not subside—instead, they intensified. In addition,
the maturity of Thompson’s views as an agent bore striking similarities to Humphreys’.
More than any other circumstance, perhaps, they rectify Humphreys’ troubled career at
the Agency—particularly his opinions regarding slave policy.
Ushering forth those views was Richard K. Call, rehashing an old controversy
when he wrote the President in 1835 regarding citizens’ ability to purchase slaves of
numerous Indians. Several had done so and personally, Call had no problem with the
notion. If there was no objection to the purchase, “and I presume there can be none,” he
added, there was “no measure” which promised so much towards their removal west.
The slaves had great influence over the Indians, he argued. Through the 1830s, in fact,
they had developed into the most alarming setback in having the Seminoles relocated. If
the Indians were permitted to “convert them into specie,” one great obstacle in the way of
that removal “may be overcome.” The Attorney General agreed, and soon Andrew
Jackson personally endorsed the course.276
At least Humphreys, in 1826, had supported the idea. The newest agent, on the
other hand, clearly did not. And, with a defiance striking similar to Humphreys’, the new
agent recoiled against the idea with a surprising aggressiveness. He particularly
275
Biographical Directory, 1711; Bond of Wiley Thompson, in McAllister to Cass, January 23, 1833, LR
SEM, r. 800; Westcott to Herring, November 15, 1833, ASPMA 6: 490-491. For more information on
Thompson, see Mahon, 87-88.
276
Call to President, March 22, 1835, ASPMA 6: 464.
128
emphasized the slaves’ relationships with the Indians, noting in it “the true cause of the
abhorrence of these negroes of even the idea of any change.” With this relationship in
mind, with an “indulgence so extended by the owner to the slave,” Thompson forcibly
asserted, it was obvious to anyone “that an Indian would almost as soon sell his child as
his slave,” except, perhaps, when drunk. Personally, he continued, as agent he had
assured both the Indians and blacks that their movement west would be the safest
recourse for both parties, and the best way to continue their coexistence. As a result, he
declared, he had refused to permit anyone to buy or sell any slave, “unless it be clearly
dictated by humanity,” and he would continue that policy.277
In an impressive outburst of indignity over Washington’s enthusiasm, Thompson
continued his scathing disapproval of the administration’s suggested change in policy.
They existed in “relative ease and comparable freedom,” he stressed, also forcefully
reiterating that to secure a continuance of that relationship was the primary reason he had
urged them to remove west in the first place. “I should feel that I was accessory to the
enslaving a freeman if I were to permit the sale of one or more of them in favor of the
views of those who, for their own aggrandizement, may wish to purchase.” With the
most respectful deference to the department, he concluded, any other course would
amount to “an abandonment of the principles of the treaty and of humanity.”278
He continued voicing his extreme disapproval to the acting secretary of war two
months later. The Department recognized the blacks’ influence with the Indians, he
claimed. It doubtless also understood their “undeniable abhorrence” to the idea of being
transferred out of the territory and onto sugar plantations. Those views were, after all, the
277
278
Thompson to Cass, April 27, 1835, ibid.: 533-534.
Ibid.
129
primary reason the Indians had originally resolved not to emigrate. He had worked
tirelessly to persuade them otherwise, personally assuring both the Indians and blacks
that they would be transferred together, and protected from the Creeks. Surely then,
Thompson sourly concluded—in light of these assurances, it would be more
conscientious of the government to see to the “punctilious redemption of those pledges,”
rather than to proceed in “classing them with the Indian skins and furs.” He was
ashamed, the agent reiterated, that his views should differ so fundamentally from those of
the government—views which “I verily believe so deeply involved principles of
humanity, justice, and an enterprise for the success of which, standing in relation which I
do to the government and these people, I am more responsible, perhaps, than any other
person.”279 Jackson finally, in July of 1835, recommended a prohibition on having
citizens buy slaves—at least unless permitted by the agent.280
In another almost entertaining reappearance, Archibald Clark again began
petitioning to have the claims of Mary Hannay attended to, almost seven years after he
first approached Humphreys. He furnished McKenney with one of these original
correspondences—an order from the secretary of war to Humphreys, dated March of
1828—which demanded that Humphreys deliver the slaves claimed by Mary Hannay.
Clark now alerted McKenney that he was ready “to comply with the above-recited
requisition.”281
Thompson, however, took a few exceptions with the suggestion. First, the Treaty
of Payne’s Landing, concluded in 1832, dealt specifically with the issue of slave claims.
279
Wiley Thompson to C. A. Harris, June 17, 1835, ibid.: 470-471.
Endorsement of Andrew Jackson on Thompson to the President, June 14, 1835, ibid.: 478.
281
Thompson to Herring, July 20, 1835, ibid.: 470. See also: R. L. Gamble to Cass, February 28, 1835,
ibid.
280
130
In article six, it provided for compensation to be provided by the government in cases of
disputed slave claims, as to relieve the Indians from the “repeated vexatious demands for
slaves and other property alleged to have been stolen and destroyed by them,” and speed
their removal west. It seemed clear to Thompson that Clark’s claim fell under that
provision; if the Department should take up the issue, it would be to decide on a
monetary adjustment, not to seize property. Far more ironic, however, Thompson added
that as far as he had read the enclosed evidence, Hannay had no title to the claimed
slaves. Nothing supported Clark’s assertions. On the other hand, an affidavit from a Mr.
Wanton—whose credibility, Thompson confided, was supported by himself and General
Duncan Clinch—directly contradicted her claim. “I am therefore still of the opinion,” he
concluded, “that Mrs. Hannay has no equitable right to the negroes in question.”282
How surprising. In the five years since Humphreys was removed, the very same
controversy was an irritating presence at the Agency and in the Florida territory. What is
most interesting, then, is that practically the very same agent was in control, and
defending his native charges in the very same ways. Who knows what would have
happened to Agent Thompson. With views akin to those of Humphreys, he had most
certainly placed himself in a similar trajectory. Yet, that never happened. Thompson
was gunned down by Osceola after dinner on December 28, 1835, as he strode around the
Agency palisade with Lieutenant Constantine Smith—one of the two simultaneous
actions, along with the massacre of Dade’s command, recognized as the commencement
of the Second Seminole Indian War.283
282
283
Thompson to Herring, July 20, 1835, ibid.: 470.
Mahon, 103-104.
131
A conflict heavily participated in by black warriors, the war soon became
recognized as having been initiated over the expansion of slavery into the Florida
frontier. As Major General Thomas S Jesup famously suggested only a year into the
struggle: “This, you may be assured, is a negro, not an Indian war; and if it be not
speedily put down, the south will feel the effects of it on their slave population before the
end of the next season.”284 Yet the prewar years, examined here through the 1822-1830
Indian Agency and through Gad Humphreys, illustrate that same cause fermenting almost
a decade previous.
284
Jesup to Butler, ASPMA 7: 821.
132
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